Gus Le Breton
Interview with Gus Le Breton
CO-FOUNDER, B’AYOBA
Lives in: Harare, Zimbabwe
Baobab powder, extracted from the fruit of the baobab tree, incorporates practically 4 occasions the vitamin C of oranges and is wealthy in important minerals resembling potassium and magnesium. Zimbabwe-based entrepreneur Gus Le Breton, co-founder of B’Ayoba, an organization that produces baobab powder, spoke with AfricanOptimist’s Sanja Göhre, in regards to the fruit’s business potential and his journey of penetrating worldwide markets. Le Breton additionally chairs the African Baobab Alliance.
Highlights from the interview embody:
- The enterprise case for turning baobab fruit right into a worthwhile export
- Navigating the complexities of getting into European and US markets
- Addressing meals security challenges in baobab powder manufacturing
- The vital want for standardisation in Africa’s baobab trade
- The untapped potential of baobab within the international well being meals sector
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For a transcript and present notes of the podcast, go to africanoptimist.co.za
With simply over 700 million of Africans living in rural areas, rising rural economies stays one of many largest challenges for reversing excessive poverty on the continent.
For Zimbabwean entrepreneur Gus Le Breton, a possible resolution with a profitable future, lies with wild-harvested merchandise like these from indigenous baobab and marula timber, pure assets that develop in abundance amid native rural communities.
“Baobab is one thing the place the very, very poorest individuals in the neighborhood can profit from promoting baobab, and actually virtually preferentially do, as a result of there’s no uncooked materials that’s required, there’s no inputs which can be required, you don’t want fertiliser, you don’t want seed, you don’t want something to reap a baobab fruit. Actually, in case you’ve acquired two arms and two legs, you’ll be able to harvest a baobab fruit.”
Baobab processors additionally stand to profit from the rising potential of this area of interest product. The baobab market is projected to broaden from $2.7 billion in 2024 to $6.2 billion by 2032, with a compound annual development price of 11% throughout this era.
“So if you’re an affect investor and you’re looking at some type of enterprise alternative that’s going to profit actually the underside of the pyramid individuals,” says Le Breton, “you may not get higher than this.”
Conventional makes use of of the baobab tree
Baobab timber develop in 33 African nations, from very dry areas with rainfall under 400 mm/12 months to coastal areas with rainfall of 1,200 mm/yr. Technically a succulent, the oldest specimen was a Zimbabwean tree, carbon-dated at 2,450 years. The timber are extremely resilient within the face of droughts and weather conditions, and customarily produce fruit abundantly each one to 2 years.
Traditionally, baobab derivatives – resembling powder from its nutrient-rich fruit pulp, natural teas and medicines from its leaves and funicles (the skinny twine attaching the seed to the fruit wall), and twine from its bark – have been broadly used regionally. Nevertheless, it wasn’t till Le Breton arrived that these merchandise have been considered via a business lens.
“All of them thought I used to be fully nuts … I’d say to rural individuals, ‘You understand, there’s these timber, you may have eaten the fruit your entire life, what about promoting it?’ And they’d simply giggle at me and it was like, ‘Who’s ever going to purchase this? I imply, they’re free. You possibly can choose them up off the bottom. Why would anybody pay cash for that?’”
For Le Breton, the important thing to stopping the felling of baobab timber for firewood – an all-too-common follow as native communities cleared land for money crops – was to make this indigenous useful resource economically precious and viable. He believed that if baobab timber may generate revenue, native communities would defend them and guarantee their preservation.
Reworking a standard fruit right into a marketable product
However how does one remodel a useful resource with an extended historical past of conventional use into one thing with actual business worth?
From early on, Le Breton set his sights on the export market, conscious of the sturdy stigma towards native merchandise inside Africa on the time. He additionally selected to start out by producing baobab oil relatively than powder.
“We weren’t positive that we may instantly grasp the type of hygiene points required to make sure a protected meals product, working at a grassroots group stage,” he stated of the choice.
Nevertheless, oil manufacturing got here with its personal set of challenges, as Le Breton and some small communities in northeast Zimbabwe struggled to supply a high-quality product at scale.
“The standard was very unpredictable; it was a pure product,” he stated. “Every batch that we produced regarded a bit totally different, no significant-sized beauty purchaser was ever going to purchase an ingredient that was … principally being produced in such a type of small-scale and barely rinky dink method.”
It was in truth with one other oil, marula oil, that Le Breton had his first style of success after he and 4 different organisations acquired collectively in a bid to standardise marula oil manufacturing and pooled their assets to promote it. After worldwide retailer Physique Store began shopping for the oil and utilizing it in one in every of their make-up merchandise, demand for the oil grew considerably, to the purpose the place it’s now a effectively established product within the trade.
Securing European market entry for baobab powder
Whereas high quality points in oil manufacturing have been important, the larger problem lay in getting baobab powder to the worldwide market.
“There was a gaggle of rules, which nonetheless exist to this present day, round meals security within the EU that principally stated it was unlawful to promote a meals ingredient on the European market with out first demonstrating convincingly that it was protected. [This] means placing it via toxicological trials – which I perceive, if it’s a meals ingredient that’s simply been cooked up in a laboratory – however it is a conventional meals ingredient that individuals have actually consumed safely for hundreds of years. However, sadly, the regulators didn’t see it that approach,” Le Breton says.
The EU novel meals regulatory framework was established within the Nineteen Nineties to guard European nations from foods that had been genetically modified, and Le Breton had no selection however to comply with the stringent guidelines and rules concerning toxicological testing and different standards to offer baobab powder an opportunity within the EU.
As a part of an affiliation of firms and NGOs attempting to advertise commerce in indigenous plant merchandise from southern Africa, Le Breton and his crew have been capable of submit an utility to the European Meals Security Authority. The method took 4 years from 2004 to 2008 and value about $500,000. As soon as attained, it was adopted up rapidly by the US’ Meals and Drug Administration’s GRAS (usually recognised as protected) approval.
Le Breton views these approvals as a big victory and milestone for producers of indigenous meals from southern Africa. They will now apply for approvals which can be extra inexpensive and considerably quicker.
“We have been the primary individuals to focus on the truth that these rules have been set as much as stop genetically modified organisms from being launched, to not stop indigenous meals. And on account of that, the stress that we dropped at bear, the European Meals Security Authority launched a separate class of Novel Meals based mostly on a standard meals, which doesn’t require the identical depth of toxicological testing because the GM meals do.” Le Breton himself is now engaged on three totally different Novel Meals functions for conventional or indigenous meals from southern Africa, together with the bambara nut.
A lady carrying baobab fruits. (Provided to How we made it in Africa by B’Ayoba)
Managing meals security and standardising manufacturing throughout Africa
After gaining approval, the largest problem for Le Breton and different producers was managing meals security dangers by producing baobab powder in a sterile, pathogen-free surroundings.
“After all in a standard rural house, that doesn’t essentially work. It’s truly actually not attainable to supply export high quality baobab that’s been cracked open and processed in any person’s house. Since you simply, you don’t know. You don’t know whether or not that particular person has washed their arms. You don’t know in the event that they’re cracking it open on a floor that’s clear. You simply don’t know.
“So we now have needed to be taught the arduous approach that this must be performed in a type of sterile, semi-industrial setting in an effort to minimise any danger of bacterial contamination and ensure we produce a sterile product. I’m proud to say that we do.”
Le Breton is chair of the African Baobab Alliance, an organisation dedicated to defending the powder’s fame to ensure that demand to develop. An enormous focus for organisation is standardisation throughout all nations the place baobab fruits are processed.
“As a result of now baobab is popping out of increasingly more nations in Africa and there are totally different situations, you realize, the situations in Zimbabwe are totally different from these in South Africa, are totally different from these in Angola, from these in Senegal, from these in Sudan. And we’re attempting to supply a product that finally is standardised and is identical.”
The alliance can be closely concerned in advertising and marketing baobab powder as a superfruit and is advocating for extra analysis into its well being advantages – given its excessive vitamin C, magnesium, and potassium content material – in addition to its documented pre- and probiotic properties, that are important for intestine well being.
“The analysis is required to allow shoppers to make extra correct choices which can be based mostly on good science, not simply on advertising and marketing spiel … Why the analysis hasn’t occurred prior to now in baobab is simply just because baobab was by no means actually recognised as a business alternative, due to this fact it didn’t justify having any analysis into it … I feel we are able to transfer from this present lack of knowledge to an abundance of data inside a reasonably quick house of time, throughout the subsequent decade. And clearly I’m doing the whole lot I can to attempt to speed up that course of.”
Baobab’s future potential
Le Breton’s analysis signifies important development in baobab gross sales, but he believes the continent’s potential stays untapped. In Africa, baobab gross sales have risen from 20 tonnes in 2010 to 250 tonnes in 2022; within the US, from 2 tonnes to 200 tonnes; and within the EU, from 35 tonnes to 170 tonnes over the identical interval. However that is just the start, says Le Breton, because the continent has the potential to supply 15,000 tonnes per 12 months.
In his firm, B’Ayoba, which produces a variety of baobab merchandise, over 5,000 rural harvesters are concerned within the baobab provide chain. With every harvester supporting 4 or 5 individuals, the full quantity benefiting from baobab manufacturing is estimated to be between 20,000 and 25,000 individuals
“If an investor is coming in and their sole goal is to get wealthy fast, then yeah, I feel that they’ll in all probability go and discover one thing else and go some other place. But when they’re taking a look at broader social affect, I don’t assume there’s many areas the place you may get such a excessive social affect return as you’ll be able to with wild harvested components.”