16
UGANDA
Empowerment through mushroom training
The city of Kabale lies in the south western tip of Uganda. Our journey took eight hours over a ha- zardous, scorching and bumpy road until we reached our destination - the market town and trans- port hub in the cool hills, deep in the interior. Who would imagine that this far-flung spot would be home to one of the most active training centres for oyster mushroom growers in Africa? By Magda Verfaillie, Mycelia
The city stands at an altitude of around 2,000 metres in a hilly region which is still the habitat of mountain gorillas. Despite its proximity to the equator, the tem- perature only reaches about 22°C in the daytime and falls to 10°C at night. Add to this monthly rainfall of 100 to 150 mm and high relative humidity, and you have conditions that mushrooms feel perfectly at home in. There is a long tradition of gathering and trading wild mushrooms here, so for the Ugandans it was just a small psychological step to commercial growing. We had been invited to visit Kabale by Fullwell Mill, an importer of Fair Trade goods in Great Britain. As well as dried bananas, the company also markets dried oyster mushrooms grown in Uganda. Our assignment was to optimise the spawn laboratory so that greater numbers of growers could be supplied with affordable, good quality spawn and to train the staff at the MTRC, Mushroom Training and Resource Centre.
Peace Byandusya in front of a stand with com- mercial packaging for dried oyster mushrooms at her MTRC.
Peace and ambition Peace Byandusya, the founder and powerhouse behind the MTRC, is an exceptional woman. Driven by her passion for mushrooms she started a modest, privately
owned company in 1995. But Peace didn’t stop there: “Good spawn was impossible to find here, so I made my own glove box to produce spawn myself. And it worked! Soon I was selling small bags of spawn to far- mers in the surrounding area. I explained to them what to do, and if they wanted help selling their produce I was happy to provide it.” One thing led to another and pretty soon Peace was the pivotal person for some 800 mushroom growers who depended on her for training, spawn and a marketing channel. The time was ripe to introduce more structure in the shape of a one-stop- shop for growers. She founded the MTRC with a clear vision: helping as many small-scale farmers as possible to improve their livelihoods. “By promoting the cultivation of oyster mushrooms, I want to contribute to the development of this region. Isn’t it just wonderful that thanks to this extra income, poor families can manage to pay the school fees for their children? And other farmers benefit too, they can earn money from their agricultural waste which before was simply burnt on the fields.” The work done by Peace did not go unnoticed. She received a lot of media attention and became a shining example of rural development. She was awarded national and international accolades, including for her efforts to empower women in rural areas, and more and more doors opened to her. She took part in a ‘training for trainees’ programme in Delhi, and training to sup- port working women in Mumbai. She made grateful use of her fame and started an intensive campaign of lobbying with local and international NGOs, private and state-funded institutes. Her project was supported with funding, compost toilets, equipment and training. In 2007 the first part of the centre was officially opened, and in 2008 President Museveni personally laid the first foundation stone for the expansion of the centre with a training hall. Peace is also supported financially, and with logistics, by the Ugandan Industrial Research Institute (UIRI), the director of which originally comes from the region. Jane and Joyce, two UIRI officials, were sent to Kabale to attend our training week.
Electricity and logistics There is certainly no lack of ideas and motivation, but
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