'Tuk-Tuk' riders tasked with supplying new presidential initiative banana products

Officials from Bushenyi the district-based BIRDC over the weekend flagged off the sale of their finished products in the open market. During their commercialization launch at their model farm and distribution store in Jinja city’s agricultural showgrounds, the officials said that the products are being made available to Ugandans, who for long have been demanding the fruits of the banana research initiative.

Their campaign involved the commissioning of 11 distributors who will be using tricycles commonly referred to as "tuk-tuk" to easily supply finished banana processed products to supermarkets and wholesale dealers across the country.

Origins of BIRDC

BIRDC, which was birthed from the 18-year-old Presidential Initiative in Banana Improvement and Development (PIBID), is steering efforts of marketing finished products extracted from banana fingers across the East African Community (EAC), Europe and the Middle East.

BIRDC boasts of extracting flour from banana fingers, locally known as “tooke flour,” which is a raw material for several forms of bakery products ranging from cake, bread, chapattis, crisps, biscuits, porridge, among others, coupled with nutritious supplements, paper extracted from banana fibre and other products still under study.

Performance

PIBID's director, Florence Muranga says that after concluding 12 years of intensified research in several banana products extracted from different species and excelling through all world-class human food consumption standards checks, they rolled out a six-year long commercialisation plan, which involved intensified marketing in Kampala city and the diaspora.

Muranga notes that BIRDC will ensure increased earnings for the banana farmers who are direct beneficiaries of the dividends across the value-addition chain, from the harvesting to the processing stages.

She adds that farmers from the project piloting areas of greater Bushenyi and other parts of the country have a ready market for their surplus bananas, which can be processed into other consumables to avoid undesirable post-harvest losses.

Future applications

Science and Technology Minister, Monica Musenero, has advised farmers to embrace value-addition processes saying that, not only are they drivers of employment opportunities, but also high revenue earners compared to the direct sale of freshly harvested products in the markets.

Citing the example of BIRDC and PIBID, which jointly employ 350 employees, with 10% of them being direct scientists, Musenero urged members of the general public to support research-based value-addition drives, which she says carry the capacity of creating more jobs for the whole population, irrespective of their academic speciality.