Aduna seeks votes to create income in Northern Ghana

Aduna the Africa-inspired health food brand and social business, seeks to create a global market for the baobab fruit, mainly grown in the Northern and Upper East Regions.

The company’s mission is to create demand for natural products from small-scale producers in Africa, starting with baobab.

A statement issued by the corporate entity in Accra on Monday, and copied to Ghana News Agency said to this end, the company has beaten 2,500 companies to reach the final 10 of Virgin’s “Pitch to Rich” competition, and needs Ghanaians’ votes to win a GH? 1.5 million marketing campaign, which would be used to make baobab famous and create sustainable livelihoods for 800,000 households in Northern Ghana.

The link to vote is: www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk

Baobab is a nutrient-dense fruit that grows in the severely-deprived Upper East Region and throughout northern Ghana.

Baobab trees are entirely community-owned and harvested wild. There are 8,000 communities in northern Ghana that could supply the baobab fruit from a crop that is so abundant and mainly goes waste.

Aduna Co-Founder and Managing Director Andrew Hunt said: “Aduna is already sourcing baobab from 1,100 women in the Upper East, with average annual income increasing from just GH? 50.00 to GH? 600.00 – this is transformative. We need Ghanaians to take 10 seconds to vote for us so we can get Richard Branson’s backing to make baobab famous and radically scale-up our work in Ghana.”

Aduna has pioneered a new model for development in rural Africa. Recognising the failure of the traditional aid model where donor-funds are invested in cash-crop “development projects” that ultimately fail due to lack of demand, Aduna focuses on creating a market for existing indigenous species that already grow in abundance.

The company invests heavily in marketing to build demand for Africa’s under-utilised natural products then directs the demand to rural producers via its pro-poor supply chain.

The National Resource Institute, 2006, estimated that two to three million rural households in Southern Africa alone, makes up roughly one third of the total outstanding baobab crop across the continent.