Independent mothers in the ocean’s farm

A seaweed farmer in Zanzibar wearing a wide straw hat to shield her face from the sun with her eyes covered with dark sunglasses. PHOTO I Anne Kidmose

What you need to know:

  • In the shallow water between the poles, brown seaweed sway to the current. The women wear wide straw hats that shield their faces from the sun and under the hat their eyes are covered with dark sunglasses. They are seaweed farmers at work.

It is low tide along Zanzibar’s east coast and the seabed is covered by a shallow layer of water that reflects the morning sun. Between the shore and the ocean a group of women kneel down over rows of wooden poles that are planted in the seabed.

In the shallow water between the poles, brown seaweed sway to the current. The women wear wide straw hats that shield their faces from the sun and under the hat their eyes are covered with dark sunglasses. They are seaweed farmers at work.

Fatima Haji stands with her feet in the shallow water as she ties pieces of seaweed to a rope and strings the rope out between two wooden sticks. Her movements are controlled and efficient, and it is evident that she has been a seaweed farmer for over twenty years. For the past three years she has been an employee at the Seaweed Center in Paje on the East coast of Unguja, and with her fulltime job she is able to provide for her family and help her three children and five grandchildren.

“I am making the most money now. And my husband is happy. I can even pay for the school fees, and the children come to me when they need something,” 45-year-old Fatima says.

Before she joined the centre she used to sell her seaweed to agents at the local market for Sh600 to Sh750 per kilogramme, but as a fulltime employee she is now the family’s anchor. The Seaweed Center employs 15 women who manage both the farming, harvesting, collection and pounding of seaweed. In the final stage of production, the women produce body soaps and scrubs of the seaweed. Fatima Haji uses the soaps they produce for her own body, and in the production of the soap and scrubs she gets new ideas on how to make use of the salad of the sea.

“I get more education and new ideas this way,” Fatima says.

The sunlight touches down on the ocean and it is so strong that it is almost white, with nowhere to look for a shadow. Fatima still holds the rope and pieces of seaweed in her hands and lets her lower body sink into the water. Her light blue dress gets wet and turns into a darker blue. She smiles as she feels the comfort of the cooler water, as if she has found her right element and she continues to plant the new rows of seaweed.

Beauty business

Seaweed is one of Zanzibar’s main export commodities to countries all over the world, and it is used in cosmetics, medicine and food. Since the early 1990s Zanzibar Island has been exporting seaweed on a large scale to the outside world, according to research by Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), and especially the seaweed specie known as Spinosum is popular,

Between 80 and 95 per cent of the seaweed farmers are women. Women have always been the farmers of the sea, while the men have gone fishing or been farmers of the earth, but recently more men have realised the value of seaweed.

“Men have started to realise that it can be a good business. Before, women used to depend on their husbands, but now husbands depend on them,” Gabriel Manyama from Seaweed Center says.

Instead of exporting the seaweed itself, Seaweed Center initiated a production of soaps made from seaweed in combination with different oils, and in 2011 they opened as a social enterprise, where the women are employed and trained in production techniques. When the seaweed is harvested it is left to dry in the sun, and then it is pounded and mixed with oils and herbs or flowers to add the scent. Soap making is a lengthy process of up to a month, while body scrubs can be made in just a day.

Seaweed in the past and future

The soaps and body scrubs which the women produce are purely organic and appeal largely to a Western audience. Even though the customers come from far away to buy the soaps or receive the products in packages over large distances, the women see the business’ potential.

Hadija Nasoro Mwalimu is 22 years old and the mother of two children of five and three years of age. She grew up in a family of seaweed farmers, and her parents still farm seaweed a little further down the coast. They have been doing so for as long as she can remember. Hadija has been farming and processing seaweed in the Seawood Center for one year now.

Farming seaweed requires strength and patience. The small farms that the women set up near the coastline require hard work before they bear fruit. Hadija explains that men don’t want to farm seaweed and prefer to go fishing instead, although to her the farming is much more than hardship. When she participates in both the farming and the production of beauty products, she is inspired to start her own company.

“One day I would like to start my own company and make my own soaps and scrubs,” Hadija says.

Pius James who is the centre manager of Seawood Center, he acknowledges that the production of beauty products from seaweed inspires the women to start their own businesses. He can’t stop them from pursuing their own dreams, although he won’t encourage them to leave either, he explains. The realisation that seaweed can be a crucial ingredient in the making of beauty products, makes Mr. James call it “very valuable”. Therefore the purpose of the Seaweed Center is to profit from the valuables that grow in the ocean.

“The purpose of the centre is to assist the women, but it is also a business,” he says.

The Seaweed Center relies on visiting tourists who both buy guided tours to the seaweed farms in the sea and the beauty products which the women produce. The centre also sells soaps to the community in Paje for a reduced price, but its existence is tied up with buyers outside Zanzibar. It makes the company more vulnerable to shifts in the tourism mentality and falling numbers of visitors, but Mr. James is certain that the women-run company is not just a short-term adventure.

“I think it is sustainable. Even if the tourists don’t come here, we can manage because we can sell to customers abroad,” he says.