THE STORY OF OUR WORK ON ZANZIBAR!
On Zanzibar, we, the people behind Sunnmørsegg here in Norway, have built a farm with sixhen houses, administrative buildings, and housing for employees.
We have established a company, ZANEGG ZNZ LTD, with the capacity to produce between 8,000 and 9,000 eggs daily. We have nearly 20 employees on the farm and have built a sales and distribution organization that primarily supplies high-quality eggs with fine yellow yolks to a large number of hotels in Zanzibar. We distribute using our own branded truck, which is noticeable on the roads. We have also planted about 150 lime trees on the farm and are now establishing vegetable production.
Our goal in building this is to create jobs primarily for the local population but also to operate the company with a profit. We, the people behind this company, have an agreement that any surplus will be used to help women and young people in Zanzibar in particular to acquire opportunities for income and development.
We have taken several initiatives for such activities and have many ideas we want to implement. For example, we now have more than ten women and young people who have created a livelihood by buying eggs from Zanegg at a low price. They boil the eggs and dip them in a little salt and sell them to both locals and tourists.
We are in the process of planning the Zanegg Chef School following an initiative from Nils-Henning Nesje, Nesjemat (food with heart) and in cooperation with Plastfritt Hav here on Sunnmøre. The initiative came after Nils-Henning and Caroline from Nesjemat visited Zanzibar. Our goal is to organize and finance training for women and young people in Zanzibar. Our goal is to provide education and certification to at least 100 people who can thus earn a living. This will include training in language, hygiene, cooking, sales, and customer contact. We will also build sales outlets around the south-east coast of Zanzibar, and later on the whole of Zanzibar. Those who are certified and participate in this will then be uniformed, the sales outlets will be profiled and recognizable, and it should appear professional and hygienic. Update 2024: Unfortunately, Caroline became seriously ill in 2023 and died in the spring of 2024. This has led to a postponement of the further work on ZaneggChef School, but Nils-Henning is determined to continue this work.
In addition to this, we have an established partnership with Plastfritt Hav and Havila Kystruten. This collaboration means that Havila Kystruten buys Sunnmørsegg for their boats. Sunnmørsmat has committed to a portion of the payment for these eggs being used to finance what we call our joint sustainability initiative in Zanzibar. In practice, this means that we have established organized collection of plasticfrom the beaches on the south-east coast of Zanzibar. This is based on Plastfritt Hav's strong commitment to reducing marine litter for many years here on Sunnmøre and Plastfritt Hav's international initiative is called None Plastic Ocean.
As a consequence of this, we have also become involved in what happens to the waste that is collected in Zanzibar. From a situation where much of this ends up back in nature, we have been involved in finding a solution where both plastic and other waste are handled in the most sustainable way possible. Here we have a goal of getting clean energy and other clean products out the other end.
After many years and many trips to Zanzibar, we chose in 2021 to buy a beachfront property and after a year of applications and work to get all the documents in place, we started building our own hotel in the summer of 2022. In July 2023, the facility was completed with 14 rooms, including two suites, a bar and restaurant, a swimming pool with three sections, a reception, a laundry room and more. The hotel is located directly on the beach and is called Mayai Ocean Resort. Mayai is Swahili and means egg. We have also established our own travel agency that markets and sells trips to Zanzibar to Norwegian and Nordic tourists.
READ MORE: www.mayaioceanresort.com - www.zanzibardreams.com
Our egg production project in Zanzibar has evolved to be about more than just yellow yolks. We aim to establish high-quality egg production, improve food security, replace imported eggs for tourists with locally produced eggs, and contribute to raising overall food safety. We want to help create jobs and income opportunities, and it is a goal to get students studying in Zanzibar to participate in quality, training, and mentorship programs. We also want to contribute to student exchange between Zanzibar and Norway and aim to be a "game-changer" in Zanzibar!
These are big and ambitious goals, but at the same time, it's just the beginning of the adventure of our work in Zanzibar...
HOW DID THIS ADVENTURE ON ZANZIBAR START?
It all started in the autumn of 2015. I was a farmer, producing eggs, beef, and milk, and a few years earlier, we had established Sunnmørsegg as a local brand in Sunnmøre. I was driving down Gudbrandsdalen when my phone rang.
Hello! It was a complete stranger calling me. He was sitting on a bench outside a store in Ålesund city center and had seen the poster that presented Sunnmørsegg with the yellowest yolks you can imagine. He briefly explained that he had been to Zanzibar many times over the past 12-15 years and had an idea that local women could keep chickens and produce eggs with yellow yolks for the tourism industry on the island.
So the question came: Do you want to join an adventure and travel to Zanzibar to make this happen? I'm a person who thinks it's important to be open to new things and opportunities, so the answer came pretty much straight away: YES! There was a silence on the other end of the phone call... It seemed to come as a bit of a shock, and not something he was used to, the fact that I said yes directly over the phone. I'd say today that this yes-answer has led to a new dimension in my life.
Throughout the winter and spring, we made plans, and at the end of September 2016, I traveled to Zanzibar for the first time. This was my first trip to Africa, apart from trips to Gran Canaria, and when we got there, we rushed around and I got to see everything that tourists usually don't get to see and some of what tourists experience there. For me, it was a culture shock!
Zanzibar is a fantastic island off the coast of Tanganyika, and together they form the union called Tanzania. There are fantastic sandy beaches, hundreds of hotels lined up along the beaches, but also beaches without buildings. At the same time, the island is very green and beautiful. Stone Town or Zanzibar City as it is also called is the capital and this has been a central trading center in earlier times. 1 The island is especially known for the spice trade. Today, the tourism industry accounts for about 80% of the island community's income. At the same time as all the tourists are enjoying themselves on the fantastic beaches, a large part of the local population lives in great poverty. In fact, poverty is greater in Zanzibar than 2 it is on the mainland of Tanzania. The life expectancy among the local population is actually below50 years on average, and a pediatrician told me that young children who come to the hospital where he worked mainly suffered from malnutrition.
We stayed in very simple hotels and were served local eggs. These eggs had yolks that were about as white as the egg white, and it would be an exaggeration to say that it was very appetizing. I can therefore understand why some nicer hotels import eggs with yellow yolks so that tourists get eggs that are more like what they are used to. We visited the market in Stone Town and rushed around. I saw stacks of egg trays standing in the sun and quickly realized that there was a lot to be done here for anyone who wanted to tackle the task of producing local eggs with yellow yolks and of high quality for the tourism industry. At the same time, there had to be a potential in replacing locally produced eggs with the eggs that were imported. This could really be something that created jobs, income, and improvement in Zanzibar.
Once home, we brainstormed both to find out how we could achieve something in Zanzibar and to find out how we could finance it. The main sketch of what needed to be done and how it looked, I saw the contours of everything when we were down there, but it was a long way to realize it. Eventually, we got in touch with the Royal Norwegian Society for the Development of Norway. They had been working with development aid in Africa for over 40 years and of all places, they had an office in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania, which is about two hours by speedboat from Zanzibar. We ended up entering into a cooperation agreement with Norges Vel, and we were now really starting to make plans. The office in Dar es Salaam did a fantastic job for us and developed a business plan based on our plans. They sent out a master's student who traveled around the hotels in Zanzibar for weeks and conducted a comprehensive market survey. This only confirmed that there was great potential for our idea.
Then we started planning a big workshop in Zanzibar. This was to take place in September 2018, so it had been two years of planning. It was Norges Vel who took care of the planning and implementation of the workshop, and we had 18 participants, including four women in the target group who only spoke Swahili.
A while before the workshop, I was called by Leif from the Elverum area. He told me that he was involved in egg production in Tanzania and that he had extensive experience in development work in Africa. I invited him to join the workshop and thanks to this invitation, we are where we are today!
Just before leaving for Zanzibar, Leif called again and said that it was his sister who took care of everything to do with chickens and egg production so she had to come to the workshop... I really had to use my powers of persuasion to get Norges Vel to take one more person, but luckily we got a place for Leif's sister. When we entered the meeting room, there were name tags on all the seats at the horseshoe-shaped table, but next to Leif it said Leif's sister. We were probably a bit surprised when we met Leif for the first time. The one who came with Leif was Innocent, now the CEO of the company we have established in Zanzibar.
It turned out that Innocent was a veterinarian with his own practice while also running egg production with about 1,000 hens and a hatchery. He had been to Norway and completed the last two years of his education at what is now NMBU in Ås. Here he got to know Leif and they developed a father/son relationship and after his studies, he worked for a few months in Leif's entrepreneurial company. After returning to Tanzania, Leif has spent many months down there and together they have built up the business that Innocent runs in Dar es Salaam. At Ås, Innocent had a professor named Lars Olav Eik. Later, when Innocent and his family were in Norway in the summer of 2019, we had a joint meeting with the professor at Ås and this has opened many doors to cooperation for us.
The workshop was a very good meeting where what really impressed was the local women. The business plan was presented and all the challenges one can experience as an egg producer in Africa were discussed, such as price falls, increased feed prices, diseases, and more. The women were nevertheless just as enthusiastic and were not deterred. We also went around and looked at potential locations to establish ourselves and had meetings with potential partners. We had thought a lot about who we should invite with us on this project and we ended up wanting most of all that we could get the two hatcheries that hatch chicks for egg production in Norway with us. Pål Ånund from Børge Undheim AS was at the workshop, but the one who eventually joined the project was Steinsland & co AS, and here Tone Steinsland joined the board of the company in Zanzibar.
Once home again, we were more eager than ever and an application for funding of the project was sent to Norad from Norges Vel. The project plan was to build a facility with 10,000 hens, an administration building, a warehouse, and a guardhouse. Furthermore, we were going to build up a sales, marketing, and distribution organization and build up the parallel to Sunnmørsmat and Sunnmørsegg in Zanzibar. This with a main facility with 10,000 hens was both to quickly get a volume so that we could be ready to deliver when we first enter the hotel market, but also to get a volume that can cover the costs of such an organization. We were then going to build up over a hundred local small-scale farms, preferably run by women and young people. We were going to offer training, a mentorship program, and high-quality feed, as well as take care of sales and quality work. Underlying the entire project was the idea of sustainability, both in terms of replacing imported eggs with locally produced eggs, building up an economically sustainable value chain, and contributing to a sustainable society. That is, both social, economic and biological sustainability, cf. the UN's definition of sustainability.
It was exciting days while we waited for an answer from Norad.
Then the downturn came...! The application to Norad was rejected! After everything had gone so well and we had met so much goodwill and faith in our project, we now sat wondering if we should twiddle our thumbs for a year or what we should do. As the Sunnmøring I am, I am probably not made to sit and wait, so we had to find another way to do it.
We contacted Norges Vel and asked if they could create a separate business plan for the part of the plan that dealt with the central facility, the establishment of 10,000 hens, as well as the sales, marketing, and distribution organization. They were again willing and created such a plan for us. Central questions were how much capital we had to raise and who we should bring with us on this?
Eventually, we got an overview of this, and we planned to establish a limited company in Zanzibar so that we could invite others to join us. From the idea that we should get many investors involved, it developed over time to become such that the project is largely financed by Sunnmørsegg. The fact is that it is the Sunnmøring's great support for buying Sunnmørsegg that has financed almost the entire project in Zanzibar! In addition, Steinsland & co AS contributed a small share of the capital while also contributing expertise. We made a shareholder agreement that states that if we succeed with this and the company manages to make money, this money will be used to build up small-scale egg producers, mainly women and young people, as well as other aid work in Zanzibar and Tanzania.
We had now reached the summer of 2019, and Innocent and his family were in Norway to visit Leif. While they were in Norway, Leif, Innocent, and his family and I took a trip together to Steinsland & co on Jæren. There, investor agreements and shareholder agreements were signed, and we were really up and running. We hired a consultant who had worked for NorgesVel in Dar es Salaam, and Innocent started as CEO. In the autumn and winter of 2019/20, there were many trips to Zanzibar, and we traveled from office to office there. We found a plot of land that we agreed to buy, but then it stopped because of a neighbor who protested our plans. After three trips, we were back to square one and looking for a plot... Eventually, we have had a very good cooperation with the authorities in Zanzibar, and they eventually offered us to buy a plot directly from the authorities. This is located in a small village called Bwejuuon the opposite side of Paje from Jambiani, where we had first found a plot.
I cannot praise Innocent enough for the job he has done both in securing this plot, planning the farm, and not least in terms of building the facility. Of course, Corona has affected us greatly so that we have not been able to travel down as we had planned. But down 1 there in Zanzibar, the construction process continued, and when I came down in November 2020, the farm was almost finished. Four hen houses were then completed. They are divided into five separate animal rooms. In addition, there was a built administrative building with a warehouse, locker rooms, a veterinary office, and a main office. In addition, there will be a guardhouse with a toilet and a room where you can stay overnight. Later, we have built another hen house, a rearing house where the chicks are fed from one day to sixteen weeks of age, as well as staff housing with six separate rooms and toilet and shower facilities.
Through contact with Lars Olav Eik at NMBU in Ås, we have been introduced to key people in the authorities and universities in Zanzibar. We have also had good contact with the Norwegian embassy in Dar es Salaam, and what we are now building up is done in close cooperation with both local, regional, and central authorities in Zanzibar.
In the autumn of 2019, Tord was with us on a trip to Zanzibar. He is a guy with great social commitment, and he is from Sunnmøre! He became involved in what we are doing down there, and he joined us on another trip in February 2020. In Zanzibar, we now have everything ready to start an NGO where Tord is a board member. This NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) is the organization that will be responsible for building up small-scale egg producers, training and mentoring programs, but also cooperation with, among others, the university in Zanzibar. Together with NMBU in Ås and several universities in Tanzania, we have applied for funding to finance this work, but none of the applications have resulted in any funding for this work. We have strong faith that we will be able to carry this out ourselves without any support, but we could do so much more if we got funding from Norad or similar funding sources.
Over time, our goal has evolved to be about more than just yellow yolks. We aim to establish high-quality egg production, improve food security, replace imported eggs for tourists with locally produced eggs, and contribute to raising overall food safety. We want to collaborate with all local producers who wish to work with us, and it is a goal to get students studying in Zanzibar to participate in quality, training, and mentorship programs. We also want to contribute to student exchange between Zanzibar and Norway and aim to be a "game-changer" in Zanzibar! These are big and ambitious goals, but at the same time, it's just the beginning of the adventure of our work in Zanzibar...
Update November 2021:
The year 2021 has not been quite as we hoped and planned, but it has still been an exciting and developing year for us. Due to the ongoing pandemic, I did not get down to Zanzibar until the end of June. In the meantime, Innocent had done a fantastic job of raising the small chicks we put in in November 2020, and at the end of April, they started laying eggs. When I arrived in July, egg sales were well underway, the yolks were yellow, and the second batch that was put in in February 2021 started laying eggs. While I was there, we got many hotels as customers, but the tourists were not back as we hoped, so we have been dependent on selling a lot of eggs to buyers until now. Prices have also been somewhat more pressured due to this, so we are still a long way from breaking even. We have bought a truck from Japan to distribute the eggs. This was delivered in September, which was almost five months late. This is due to challenges with transportation due to the pandemic. When I came down one of the last days in September on my second trip in 2021, it stood on the farm fully profiled, and it works well as a rolling advertisement when our employees drive around and deliver eggs. On the farm, we now have 10 employees in addition to Innocent, who is the CEO. On every trip I go down, I learn more about the community in Zanzibar, and the cooperation with Innocent has been completely unique. He tells me a lot about what he and the other employees experience, and this gives me ever-better knowledge and insight into how we can develop the project further. What has been a real highlight for me is to experience that we find new ways and opportunities to help those who need help the most.
When I was in Zanzibar in July, a woman came to the farm and bought some trays of eggs. I asked Innocent who she was, and he told me a touching story; she had come to the farm and asked Innocent for help just five weeks earlier. She told me that she had lost her husband and that she was struggling to support herself and her children. Innocent had replied that we unfortunately had nothing to give her, but if she wanted, she could buy two trays of eggs from us at a reduced price. Innocent would then guarantee the purchase so that she didn't have to pay for the eggs immediately. Innocent's suggestion was that she could boil the eggs and then sell them in the local community as hard-boiled eggs. People who sell hard-boiled eggs are something you often see in Zanzibar. With fresh eggs of high quality, this quickly became a success for the woman, and five weeks later when I saw her come to the farm to buy eggs, she bought four trays and paid cash. When I was in Zanzibar in October, this had developed into 11 women and young people who buy eggs from us, cook them, and sell them. These are all in Bwejuu, the village where the farm is located. This has thus provided a livelihood for many young women and families with children. To me, this seems like a very simple way to help relatively many people, and we now think that we can offer this opportunity in many other villages on the southeast coast of Zanzibar and thus perhaps provide a livelihood for nearly 100 women and young people. In a way, we contribute to them learning to earn money by creating added value.
Throughout 2021, our engagement in Zanzibar has also expanded to new areas. At the beginning of the year, I was contacted by Bente Fiskarstrand, who runs Plastfritt Hav, an organization that has cleaned up and collected plastic in the fjords and sea in parts of Sunnmøre. She wondered if there was a lot of plastic pollution on the beaches and in the sea in Zanzibar. I told her that this issue of garbage is one of the big problems they have in Zanzibar and that there is garbage floating everywhere. At the same time, new plastic waste is constantly coming in from the Indian Ocean and filling up the beaches. Bente wondered if we could imagine a collaboration to do something about this. She wanted to get more involved internationally when it came to the challenge of marine litter and had already carried out clean-ups in the Moria camp in Greece. We quickly found "the tone" and carried out a campaign where one krone for every carton of Sunnmørseggsold in May would finance cleaning up in Zanzibar. She had some funds so she made sure to double this money and soon we had raised NOK 40,000 for the purpose. While I was in Zanzibar in July, we carried out a large-scale cleanup in cooperation with the university in Zanzibar. Approximately 300 students were bussed out to Paje, Jambiani, and Bwejuu, and we got about 250 students and teachers from the primary schools in these towns to join us in cleaning many kilometers of beaches for plastic. The plastic is temporarily stored on our farm. The action received great attention in Zanzibar, and there was even a TV report on Zanzibarsk TV, with interviews with both Innocent and me.
One thing I brought up with Bente in our first conversation was that we should probably also find out where the collected waste ends up in Zanzibar. This was because I had seen large piles of waste out in nature on the island in connection with the fact that we were looking at potential plots for the farm we were going to establish. When we asked those who showed us the plots, they told us that it was common to collect waste from hotels and take on the task of transporting it to a waste reception facility for a fee. But to deliver the waste to the reception, you have to pay for it, and therefore they just dumped the waste in nature so they could keep all the money themselves.
Bente is a driven and engaged woman, and she quickly found various alternative ways to handle waste, and soon the idea was conceived; WE SHOULD ESTABLISH A GASIFICATION PLANT IN ZANZIBAR!
Gasification is a process where waste is heat-treated without allowing oxygen to enter. This means that the waste, whether it is only plastic or different types of waste, is converted into pure water, a pure gas, and an activated carbon that is so pure that it can be used to purify water. This is a technology that has been developed over the past 10-15 years. The benefit of such a plant in Zanzibar would be completely unique! The pure gas can be used for cooking but can also be converted into electrical energy, something that is sorely lacking in Zanzibar. The charcoal can be used to purify water but can also be used as a soil improver, which can be very useful as there are many vegetable farms in the area. It can also replace sand in the production of bricks, something that is also sorely lacking. This will in any case be carbon sequestration in practice. And there is also a shortage of clean water.
In July, I presented the idea of this to Dr. Abdalla at the university in Zanzibar, and he immediately responded that this was really interesting for Zanzibar.
While I was in Zanzibar in July, I was quite active and posted updates on Facebook, and many people follow what we are doing through what I post. This is shared by friends and friends of friends, and one day I received a request to become friends on Facebook from Helene Veflen. She was currently stationed in Thailand but lives in China. At the same time, she has a company that is registered in Hong Kong and which conducts trading worldwide. She had noticed what we are doing in Zanzibar and thought it was interesting. In August, we were both back in Norway, and we met for the first time. Later, Bente Fiskarstrand, Helene Veflen, and I met. We are now a team that is committed to establishing this plant in Zanzibar.
Update September 2024:
After the COVID-19 period in 2020, Zanzibar has experienced rapid development. Over the past three years, there has been a tremendous expansion of hotels, apartment complexes, and houses. Traffic to Zanzibar, and especially from Stone Town to the southeast coast where we are located, has increased significantly. We now have a completely new road from JozaniForest to Bwejuu where the farm is located.
While working on the projects we already had, we have now developed new and exciting projects. After spending more and more time in Zanzibar and staying at about 40 different hotels, I got the idea that I should maybe get an apartment or a house. I mentioned this to Tord once when we were in Zanzibar together, and he quickly replied that it was going to be a bit lonely. "You're a social guy," he said to me... That's when the idea of building a small hotel was born, and Tord wanted to join in. In addition, Innocent joined as an owner. We started by trying to find a plot of land. This wasn't so easy when the requirement was that we had to be right on the beach. The attractive plots in the attractive areas were of course either sold or there was a bidding war and the prices skyrocketed. But in 2021, we finally found a plot that we managed to buy. The plot is 3,000 square meters, so it is relatively large. The reason it was not sold was that it had a special shape. It was narrow and went quite far back from the beach. In addition, there was a "gut" going out to the side in the middle. This gut ended in a backyard. At first, we were also skeptical about whether we could utilize this plot. So I sat at the kitchen table back home in Norway with a scaled sketch of the plot. I then drew various buildings on the same scale and cut them out. Then I tested out different placements until I found that we could divide the plot into two areas. One area then became for guests and tourists with rooms, reception, pool, and bar/restaurant. The other area then became a parking lot and service buildings and functions.
Neither I nor Tord have experience in hotel management or the travel industry other than as guests. But to find out what we should and shouldn't do, we intensified our market research by staying in more and more new hotels, but also by visiting a large number of hotels in Zanzibar. We looked at solutions and asked and dug to find out how we wanted it. We quickly agreed that our guests should both feel and know that they are in Zanzibar when they stay at our hotel. We found a contractor who undertook to build the hotel in 8 months, and after a long process of obtaining all documents on the plot, we applied for a building permit in June 2022. The processing of this application was something that impressed me. It went relatively quickly, but it was done thoroughly and we received very good guidance on how to proceed. Around mid-July, the building permit was granted, and it was ready to start construction.
On August 1, 2022, the construction process itself started. The facility was then scheduled to be completed on April 1, 2023. There were, of course, some delays, but on July 1, 2023, we had the opening ceremony at Mayai Ocean Resort, as the hotel is called. Mayai is Swahili and means egg, so we stick to our history in Zanzibar. The construction process itself was both educational and interesting. I got very good contact with many of those who worked on the site, and I learned more of the language. Not least, I got to know the expression "kashu". This means tomorrow and was often the answer when I asked when things were done. The next day it was often the same answer... I eventually found that I understood a good deal of what was discussed in Swahili, but I still have a long way to go before I can speak the language. The construction process went quickly and very well in the first months, and when I was in Zanzibar in January 2023, all the buildings were completed except for the restaurant. The concrete work on it was carried out while I was there, and when I went home in February, the Makuti roof was also in place on that building. Eventually, the progress slowed down. Nevertheless, we almost reached the opening date that was set shortly after construction started. The hotel opened for ordinary guests in the middle of July 2023.
The first year of operation was absolutely fantastic, and we've had very good occupancy. We receive very positive and good feedback from our guests, and especially our employees are highlighted as being very friendly and service-minded. We have placed great emphasis on ensuring that our employees have good working conditions. This will always be profitable in the long run, and we see it on Zanzibar as well. With the hired security company, we have now created approximately 45 jobs at the hotel. We have established increasingly better contact and cooperation with the local community. This has, among other things, led to us being offered to rent a neighboring property. This is located right next to our property and directly on the beach. There are two slightly older buildings with a total of five rooms with private bathrooms, so we can simply open up between the properties and thus we have expanded from 14 rooms to 19 rooms, but we have also agreed with the landlord that we can demolish these buildings and build a new building. We think we can build eight or ten apartments with two bedrooms and a living room with a kitchenette and a veranda directly facing the beach. These could accommodate a family of up to 6 people, which there is a great demand for. We are now starting to plan this and will, if necessary, invite Norwegians in as investors to finance this.
Otherwise, we have now ordered a solar panel system with a battery pack to ensure a stable power supply to the hotel, but also to become as sustainable as possible.
Regarding the projects we have been running from before, it goes a bit up and down. We have had a challenging year with egg production. We were in very good development in 2022 and then ordered 5,000 chicks that we raised throughout the year. We had such good profitability in production from the approximately 6,000 hens we had then that we covered all the costs of operating the farm as well as feeding the new chicks. Unfortunately, it turned out that the 5,000 chicks failed completely when they were supposed to start laying eggs. This was at the turn of the year 2022/23. Over the first few months of 2023, we lost about 30% of this batch, and we had to just terminate this. This was a big loss for us, and we are still struggling with this. Eventually, the 6,000 hens we had from before became old, and egg production decreased. It also took some time before we had the capital to buy new chicks, but now we finally have a batch of 2,000 hens that have started laying, so we'll see how that develops. Luckily, we have gotten more legs to stand on at the farm. We planted about 150 lime trees a few years ago, and they have now started to yield and generate income. We have also set up a vegetable garden. To get good enough soil to grow vegetables, we had to add a mixture of chicken manure and straw, so it has taken some time, but our goal is to grow vegetables for our own hotel.
After we started cleaning up the beaches in Zanzibar, we have established a collaboration between Plastfritt Hav, Havila Kystruten, and Sunnmørsegg. This means that Havila Kystruten buys Sunnmørsegg for its four boats that run on the route between Bergen and Kirkenes. For every box of Sunnmørsegg they buy, NOK 10 goes to pay local women and young people in Zanzibar to clean the beaches of plastic. We have now had beach cleanups in Bwejuu up to twice a week for over two years. This has also led to a change in attitude in the local community, although there is still a long way to go. As soon as it is cleaned up, new plastic waste unfortunately comes all the time... The plastic we have collected has gone for recycling on the mainland of Tanzania. Our commitment to establishing solutions to turn all waste into clean energy has unfortunately not been successful. Helene Veflen worked for several months on a feasibility study in Zanzibar, but it has proven very challenging to achieve this. However, we will continue to work to ensure that we can find local solutions for recycling all the plastic we collect.
THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE PROJECT
Rune Haram is a farmer with egg, dairy and beef production and CEO of the company Sunnmørsmat Ltd. Rune is an educated in agriculture and has many years of experience in sales and marketing. He has experience from the top level within the agricultural cooperatives in Norway and was in the period 2004 - 2006 chairman of the board for Prior Norway (egg and poultry cooperative) and helped create the current Nortura SA (meat, eggs and poultry cooperative). He has also experience from research and development work in the meat sector.
Ellen Alfsen has a master's degree in law from the University of Oslo, and has studied EU law and International comparative private law at the University of La Sapienza in Rome. She has worked as a political adviser to the Christian Democratic Party in the Norwegian Parliament, been a politician in the city of Moss and 1st deputy to the parliament for the Christian democratic party in the county of Østfold.. She has been director for the Norwegian Agriculture's Brussels Office, and now works with policy questions and communication for the Norwegian Forest Owners' Federation. Ellen has extensive experience with international cooperation.
Leif Nordli has been working as a construction contractor for 40 years and is from Elverum, Norway. He has extensive experience from Africa and has, among other things, worked for Norad in Uganda. For the last ten years he has been involved in building up both egg production and hatchery in Dar es Salaam as well as a farm in Kilowa together with Innocent. In this work, he has sent used agricultural tools and building materials from Norway to Tanzania.
Innocent Thomas Massawe grew up in Moshi, Tanzania and is a trained veterinarian from Tanzania and holds a master in animal production the Norwegian University for Life Sciences (NMBU). He has also worked for a short period in Norway and had three years of compulsory service as a field officer for the government of Tanzania.
The late Ali Mwinyi was born in Jambiani, Zanzibar and was working in the Department of Forestry, and NonRenewable Resources. He worked with forests and outfields and was responsible for the Jozani Forest National Park. He had collaborated with John John for almost 20 years and was also a board member and co-owner of the company we are building on Zanzibar. Sadly he passed away on the 21. of September 2020. We thank him for everything he contributed with!
Tone Steinsland is the third generation in the family owned company Steinsland & Co, which hatches and breeds chickens for laying hens. In addition, she is engaged in several positions of trust in agriculture both nationally and internationally. Tone has also lived for 6 years in Australia, and has, among other things, a Master in International Relations from Curtin University. In 2019, she completed AFF / NHH's Solstrand program Accelerate.
Tord Ripe is the CEO in the company The Cloud People with headquarters in Oslo. He is educated in computer science at Molde University College and has extensive experience in the IT industry. He has also been involved in the leadership of charities.