3 January 2009
Kampala — FARMERS in Masindi District are growing a medicinal shrub, ocimum (omujaaja). Gerald Tenywa assesses the prospects of this plant and asks why Government is reluctant on it's growing and processing.
As we moved closer to Margaret Nsekanabo, we could clearly hear the rhythm her fingers made as she plucked the leaves from the branches of the ocimum (omujaaja) plant. The shadows were growing longer as the sun set, and Nsekanabo, like the women folk in the village, was working faster to rush home. Nearby, bulging sacks lay in a dimly lit building.
Once a wild plant, ocimum has now proved to be a new money maker. It creates income for the farmers who count themselves among the lucky ones leading decent lives.
This has come after a landmark discovery that perfumes, insect repellant and medicine could be churned out of the medicinal oil extracted from the leaves of the ocimum plant. It has given farmers hope for a better and brighter future and improved livelihood.
"It is a wonderful venture and we believe it is going to benefit many people," says Nsekanabo. "Unlike farmers that compete for market since they grow similar crops, ocimum farmers have a ready market."
Ocimum is popular in many parts of eastern and central Uganda as a tea spice. Davidson Madira, the executive head of Budongo Community Development Organisation (BUCODO), points out that the ocimum plant has triple advantages.
The plant harvested from a small portion of less than half an acre fetches up to sh3m. This is three times what farmers get from either maize or tobacco.
"Ocimum farmers can harvest three times in a year and returns come faster than other ventures like planting trees," says Madira.
Apart from being a magic wand in fighting poverty, the plant has a strong scent, which is a deterrent to the destructive baboons from the nearby Budongo forest that used to be a constant menace to crops.
"Children that would stay away from school to watch over the straying baboons are not interrupted anymore," Madira says. "The harvests have become bountiful in parts where baboons used to raid food crops."
Madira and his colleagues started BUCODO about a decade ago to promote the conservation of Budongo forest and improve the livelihood of communities. Their work was to stop the massive destruction of trees caused each time farmers moved into new areas to cultivate maize and tobacco to earn a living. Others make their money from illegally cutting the diminishing hardwood trees like mahogany in the nearby Budongo forest, he says.
Madira started mobilising the local people after a survey. He sent out a team that stumbled on the ocimum plant. One of the people who participated in the survey interacted with herbalists who revealed the use of different plants, including ocimum.
Research
The ocimum, Madira says, was noted to have outstanding properties and was singled out for further research since people use it to treat stomach aches and when someone dies it is used to repel insects from the dead body. "It was an intriguing plant worth researching in order to exploit its attributes," he says.
With the support of the United Nations Development Programme, (UNDP) that has been promoting partnerships to fight poverty through biological diversity conservation, work on ocimum started in 2000. This has been implemented in two phases with the first phase identifying the plant and extracting the active part of the plant that has curative properties.
During this phase nine farmers from the parishes of Nyabyeya and Biiso went for training on growing of ocimum at the University of Nairobi.
The ocimum, which is a stocky shrub, is harvested three times in a year. After harvesting it is either sun dried or put in a shade for two weeks. When it is dry it is packed and taken to a distillery at Nyabyeya for medicinal oil extraction.
The Budongo organisation formed a partnership with the International Centre and Institute for Physiological Ecology (ICIPE). This also provided knowledge and skills to chemists at Nyabyeya who extract the medicinal oil from ocimum leaves. They also secured a distillery for extraction of the oil.
The Budongo organisation worked with ICIPE and a Kenyan company, Byline, to manufacture the drug, Naturub ointment and cream. However, Kenya authorities do not want the products to be marketed in Kenya, according to Madira. At this point, Madira says it is necessary to register Naturub in Uganda, but the hurdle is that the National Drug Authority has demanded $10,000 (sh18m).
Everyone knows it is during processing is when value is added to the product. That is when the real money can be made, says Madira. "But the Government's mindset while going into this has to change. The colonialists had a callous right to curtail native medicine. They put in place laws that prohibited the use of native medicine in order to protect modern medicine from competition," he says.
But policy changes sweeping across some third world countries hold a lot of promise for native medicine, according to Madira.
For instance countries like Kenya, Egypt and South Africa are making a breakthrough because they have adopted a value chain model. Their governments have taken deliberate efforts to invest in research and register their innovations.
Way forward
Madira is now persuading the Government to rethink its approaches and adopt a market value chain.
He says that is what would help put a label "Made in Uganda" on medicine on the shelves in pharmacies. Short of this, Nsekanabo and thousands of local people will be stripped of their wealth by foreign prospectors.
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