Nigeria, a Hub for Moringa
(Presented by Deji and Ife Adeleke – May 2018)
Nigeria, a country of 180 Million with majority of the population being farmers, has been farming moringa for years. It is widely grown in the northern part of Nigeria and known as Zogale.
The History of Moringa in Nigeria
In the 1970s and 80s Moringa was a popular vegetable among the lower class, eaten with staple food. It was also given to those with various illness in the rural areas.
In the last 15 years, a lot of young farmers has gone into planting moringa and adding value to it. An average home in the Northern part of Nigeria has a Moringa tree.
Nigeria hosted a Moringa conference in 2007, which also have birth to the Moringa association of Nigeria. Unfortunately the association has had some challenges in the last few years and government support has been limited to moringa growers. Despite all these challenges, Nigeria can still boast of over 20 moringa producers, producing teas, powders, oil, soaps, etc., which are available in retail stores. All shoprite, spar and big supermarkets and pharmacies in Nigeria have moringa products.
A few companies also have been able to export Moringa finished products in Europe, America and other parts of Africa.
Challenges
However, there are a few challenges that we need to overcome:
- Invasion of herdsmen on Moringa plantations.
- The buying power of the people has reduced.
- Getting our moringa certified for export.
- Lack of cohesion among moringa farmers and produce manufacturers.
We hope that as we get into the rainy season, more producers will embrace moringa and come together to develop the industry.
Plush Organics – Our Moringa Business
Plush Organics was started because there was a need to add value to our farm produce by processing our moringa leaves and seeds.
We started by producing teas (we had three variants of the moringa tea; plain moringa tea, moringa & ginger and moringa & rooibos tea).
The response to the tea was great, but the market was getting flooded as well, so we added body and beauty products. These include hair and body butters, lip balm, moringa oil bar soaps, shampoo and body wash all made with moringa oil, leaf or/and seed powder.
Plush Organics has grown in the past few years, so that in November 2017 we decided to give back to the Nigerian community through education.
We organised a spelling bee in one rural area of Kwara state Nigeria.
We had 35 schools in attendance. With over 120 students. Both primary and secondary schools categories. Every attendee got a gift pack consisting of school bags, exercise books, writing materials. They also had lunch and snacks, with ice moringa tea as a meal accompaniment.
The winning schools were awarded renovations and the first 3 winners in the 2 categories for scholarships of varying values.
Plush organics is big on education and giving back to the community.
We also went to some FEDERAL govt college, Ilorin and gave out about 800 exercise books to students.