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Among the economic development concepts for Zimbabwe is to make more use of our own natural resources, processing these for higher value products.
If at the same time the resource is a renewable resource now largely going to waste, the processing has to be done in remote areas desperate for reasonable industrial and semi-industrial jobs, and can provide at least seasonal income to local communities, then a lot of boxes are ticked when it comes to assessing the value.
The Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, originally split off to run or oversee colleges and universities, had its remit expanded dramatically in the Second Republic to use the research opportunities that a major investment in higher education automatically generates and apply these.
Hence it is now the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development, a mouthful, but a name that makes clear the need for much research to move out of ivory towers and to generate practical applications.
At the same time we created a number of other research bodies, with the necessary degree of independence since few civil servants and politicians are really equipped to direct the nuts and bolts of innovative research, but know that if there is an enabling environment then smart scientists and technicians can look for and develop a lot of good ideas.
And if there are good ties to private business then a lot of that development can be pushed into commercial exploitation.
The two marula fruit processing plants now being built in Rutenga are an ultimate example of all boxes being ticked.
Everyone knows the tree, Sclerocarya birrea. It grows everywhere in the open brachystegia woodlands that cover most of Zimbabwe except the very far south and southwest.
It is not the most attractive indigenous tree, with its small leaves, bare branches in winter, and somewhat untidy appearance, so is rarely planted in gardens or parks.
But it is the principle indigenous fruit tree, producing a large quantity of fruit in the first few months of each year.
Rural communities have for thousands of years been gathering this fruit for home consumption in season, and even making a local brew from it.
There is a strong suspicion that as settled pastoral and farming communities arose, people deliberately expanded the range of the tree by planting seeds near their settled communities, in the reasonable expectation that they would have fruit available in a few years.
But commercial exploitation has been minimal. You can find the odd bucket of fruit for sale on roadsides, and some city vendors will sell the odd cupful, but most of the harvest rots on the ground. Rodents like the seeds.
The National Biotechnology Authority has obviously been struck by the wasted resource and has done a lot of research. This has seen the pilot processing plant, now almost finished, being built in Rutenga.
But the initial research and the development or adaption of industrial-scale processing methods is sufficiently advanced that a private Indian company, Parrogate, is sufficiently impressed to have started building its own factory next door.
Now doubt the commercial investor chose that site since it has the research work being done on tap, as it were, and can access results, and have any problems that might arise solved, very quickly and easily.
That sort of interactive relationship between scientists, engineers and business is something the parent ministry has been expanded to achieve.
Already this year’s harvest is being bought. The marula harvest is easy to gather. When the fruits are mature they fall off the branches, but are still green and unripe needing to ripen on the ground in the wild or in more protected places when humans intervene.
This means that anyone with an hour or two to spare and a basket or a bucket can gather the crop in the season. No one has to do anything athletic at the end of a ladder or climb trees.
Once there is a commercial market nearby, then obviously many rural families are happy to extend their gathering, and this is already happening in the Rutenga area with the pilot plant buying and ripening the fruit.
That is already pumping money into some very poor households. And now industrial jobs, in the area, are being created.
Research workers reckon there are a wide variety of products that can be made from the fruit and from the seed, including some fairly valuable oils from the seed.
The basic idea, as with all seasonal crops, is to do the initial processing when the crop is available and then spend the rest of the year doing the more advanced processing.
One interesting possibility is developing mukumbi, the traditional brew most communities make and drink in the season, the drinking done within days of brewing.
Technically it is a wine, rather than a brew, but no one has ever done much experimentation to see if modern wine-making technologies and specialist yeasts, maturation and bottling will produce a quality product.
Presumably the National Biotechnology Authority has been thinking about this. And it is worth the effort, since markets are always on the lookout for something new, and high value products can be developed.
Rum started off as a way of using the waste from sugar refining in the West Indies, was a cheap plonk for workers and sailors but now is a fancy product marketed around the world.
Tequila was originally a local peasant brew in a very poor part of Mexico, until some smart Mexican business people reckoned there was a market for a quality version. And perhaps the ultimate was the experimentation done on the thin, sour and cheap wines made from the only grape varieties that would grow on the chalky soils of north-eastern France.
That systematic experimentation, done so legend has it by the only educated people in the area, the monks, created the double fermentation processes that now produce champagne, named after what was once a poor region.
All three drinks were developed by applied technical research on what was thought to be an unpromising raw material.
Should the Rutenga factories work well, and there is no reason to think that they will not, obviously other areas can come into the new industry.
Most people involved, the gatherers, will not be full-time, but every addition to household income, especially when no equipment or inputs are needed, makes farming households richer and more secure and most families could use a bit of cash at the start of the school year before the main field crops are harvested and sold.
The National Biotechnology Authority has clearly been doing its job and it is this sort of application of science and technology to local resources that will, step-by-step, push Zimbabwe forward.
Online Reporter