Talking Point

Honey, the nectar of flowers, has been part of many poetic expressions down the centuries. The French poet Victor Hugo is quoted, in saying ‘life is a flower of which love is the honey’. The modern day truism about honey is perhaps more farfetched. The world of honey now connotes its lyrical, gastronomical, economic and livelihood relevance.

In our earlier article, Alternative Livelihood – An Important Vehicle for Growth in Afghanistan we discussed the livelihood significance of bee harvesting and honey. Here is one more example to add to the perspective.

The challenge: Finding alternative livelihood in a country like Afghanistan is always a challenge, especially when it comes to women. One USAID funded project trained a group of 40 women in bee keeping and during this three months of training, participants learnt to produce honey and were given two boxes each, including bees and other accessories which they were using during the training program. They were also provided with the information on micro finance organization which can provide small loans to expand their production. This helped them producing honey after the training program was over. But this group was finding it difficult to sell their produce; as each individual was producing only small quantity of honey.

The value model:  The USAID’s ASMED (Afghanistan Small and Medium Enterprise Development) initiative provided another technical assistance thru Aga Khan Foundation to help this group to establish market linkages. The foundation formed a small Business Development Center (BDC) in one of the shops of a producer. This BDC acted as a collection center and suggested some improvement in packaging. This improved packaging and one collection point helped the product, produced by this small group, to move up the value chain to some extent.

They approached the local Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), responsible to provide assistance to improve the provincial economic growth, to procure their products for their consumption. PRTs were also approached earlier but could not buy the locally produced honey because of poor packaging and lack of economies of scale. After the locally formed BDC assisted in improved packaging and common collection center, the product was now acceptable and small honey producers got better worth of their produce. Small bee keepers will be earning only around $4 a day but this is better than an average wage of a carpet weaver which is in between $1-2. But this earning can go up, if they can increase their production, may be with the help of Micro Finance organization. Medium sized bee keepers can earn a moderate amount of around $9000 per year.

Another Bee Keepers’ Association was supported in Jalalabad region of Afghanistan to enable local apiaries to get business development and advisory services under one roof. An average bee keeper does not have access to business and technical information and this small association seems to be effective in providing services to the local bee keepers.

The way to success:  These programs did not cost much, may be to the tune of $15, 000 to $20,000 but it received a huge traction.

Capacity building, training to improve vocation skills and producers group formation can produce excellent result in countries like Afghanistan, if implemented effectively. Donors have pumped in millions but this has not resulted into much development in Afghanistan. The reason could partially be attributed to lack of understanding of the country, government corruption and lack of knowledge on what works on the ground and what does not.

In fact, the success of the bee keeping example could be replicated in many other areas in Afghanistan; the challenge is to implement it effectively.

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