The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
A Spalding businesswoman flew to Africa this week to help improve the lives of women farmers.
Ann Savage joined 12 other women from the food industry who headed to the remote Nou Forest in Tanzania to build beehives.
She is a non executive director of Marel, which supplies food processing systems and was previously Group Technical Director of Bakkavor.
The group, part of the Big Beehive Build spent several hours travelling from Kilimanjaro airport to reach the remote village of Bermi.
They are spending this week building 120 beehives alongside local women and raising £80,000 for the charity Farm Africa.
“By supporting farmers in Africa to build their own businesses we can change the future for them and their families. This is the third project I have participated in, the continuing success of previous projects shows how keen the farmers are on the initiatives and build and develop them into sustainable businesses. The pride and ambition of the people we have worked with has been incredible,” said Ann.
She was in Kenya with Farm Africa in 2013 working on a fish pond project and returned in 2015 to work in Tanzania.
The hives will be used by the women from the Bermi beekeeping group to build sustainable honey farming businesses to provide an income as well as an incentive to protect the forest by planting fruit trees.
The Nou Forest where they live has suffered severe deforestation in recently years.
“The money from this year’s harvest will pay for my daughter to go to school,” said villager Regina Alfred.
Farm Africa at work.
