Situation of beekeeping and its implication for SAMS Business Development in Ethiopia
In Ethiopia, beekeeping is a longstanding traditional practice and currently out of ten households, one (10 %) keeps honeybees. The country’s potential for honey production is huge, with production potential of 500 thousand tones. This is because of the fact that the country has a diverse and unique natural and cultivated flora that is suitable for beekeeping. This has helped to put the country among the major honey producers in the world. Honey in Ethiopia generally produced as a cash crop, with yearly sales amounting 90 to 95 % of total production. Because of the lack of appropriate market, 70 % of the marketed honey goes to the production of fermented local beverage (Tej) and only 30 % is used as table honey. This fact shows that if beekeeping properly supported and the huge potential is tapped, business development/Commercialisation of beekeeping activities is relatively easier in Ethiopia. Commercialisation in the context of SAMS entails creating business minded beekeepers, scaling-up production, addressing quality and apiary management issues, developing cooperatives, establishing market links with processors, buyers and so on.
Left: Tej in special glass, ready for consumption. Right: Purified table honey.
In order to realise a sustainable market, HOLETA planned to promote a strong role for the private sector in establishing business relationships and commercialisation of different SAMS products. In this approach, private sectors will take the lead in mobilizing beekeepers and providing training and other embedded services. In such approach, beekeeping commercialisation developed with the expansion of honey production that could successfully generate a marketable surplus. In the process HOLETA’s complementary support services included:
- enhancing the capacity of private companies to establish business relationships and develop export competitiveness
- Strongly work with other local and international partners in facilitating and developing SAMS businesses and the extension of SAMS techniques
- Promoting the increased engagement of youth and women.
Business relationship development
Collaborative activities and capacity development initiatives were agreed between HOLETA and two private companies to engage beekeepers in SAMS business development and relationships during the last two months and this imitative will continue with other similar companies and private operators. The planned activities included providing beekeepers with training in production and quality and honey collection and marketing arrangements.
Quality assurance manuals
International buyers are coming to realise the huge potential of apiculture in Ethiopia, and are willing to invest more of their time and money on business partnerships. Measures required to support these opportunities include a strong legal framework to address adulteration, raising awareness of honey quality issues at the country level. HOLETA will develop one quality management manual on quality production and harvest, processing and marketing and food safety in local language.
SAMS Business Models
54 SAMS Business Models have been developed by start-ups, SMEs and students in different business development activities supported by the project partners UNPAD, ICEADDIS, UNILV, UNIKAS, UNIGRA. The SAMS Business Models range from honey reselling, digital marketplaces, beekeeping supply, beekeeping products for health and beauty to tourism, education and technology incl. remote monitoring beehives, DSS, PCB, data warehouse, etc.
D2.4 – Evaluation of Business Plans *Deliverable has not been approved and accepted by the EC
D2.5 – Evaluation of Business Licenses in Place or in Formation *Deliverable has not been approved and accepted by the EC
The following tables list the SAMS Business Models for Ethiopia:
| Business Model Name and Start-Up Name | Contact Person | Summary | Business Model Canvas |
| Anabi by Anabi | Abiye Tadeos | Anabi directly sells smart beehives at lower prices for partner beekeepers, and smart beehives (beehives with monitoring and decision support systems) will be rented to crop growers. The leasing will take place during the flowering period. Anabi provides its system for partner beekeepers throughout the year. Anabi also sells bee products, particularly mono-floral honey for the global market with negotiation to its partner beekeepers. | BMC |
| MbeeHive by MbeeHive | Andualem Lemecha | MBeeHive is a low-cost new kind of modern hive, that enable harvesting extracted honey directly from the beehive. It will be bought by beekeepers for 2,500 Birr at the MBeeHive shop in order to increase honey productivity almost averagely by 3.5X and get high-quality nectar honey with much less time and cost. | BMC |
| Daemat by Daemat | Kisanet Haile Molla | Farmers do not have a convenient way of selling their products to consumers; instead, they deliver them to middlemen brokers and wholesalers who buy the agricultural products at ridiculously exploitative prices. As a result, farmers don not get the income they should get out of the harvested products. Price volatility due to supply seasonality, lack of market information, loss of quality products during inconvenient transportation of the products is the main issue in the food value chain. Daemat is a digital market platform that allows agricultural product producers to directly sell their products to consumers and gain better financial benefits. | BMC |
| Kekros by Kekros Ethiopia | Negasa Berhanu | Kekros Ethiopia expects to engage in multiple apiculture business sectors in Ethiopia –
developing a website to give online beekeeping training for agricultural professionals and beekeepers to improve their production quality and quantity, manufacturing supply beekeeping inputs like a quality beehive for beekeepers, designing and developing a beehive monitoring system for beekeepers and researchers, producing quality honey and beeswax for local and export market using its own products and services lines. |
BMC |
| Birzz by Yiblu | Azeb Assefa | Birzz is an alternativ healthy energy drink. Birzz will be bought and used by any one at any young age at retail outlets or directly from the Birzz online store in order to boost daily energy with a healthy drink. | BMC |
| Awsome Africa | Meraf Theodros | Awsome Africa helps local apiculture enterprises or individual producers to prosper themselves by giving them easy access to highly established disciplines and techniques of organic and high yield honey production. As well as to help them to take the best advantage of those skills, increase the quality and quantity of their production. It also provides supply chain facilitation services for beekeepers. | BMC |
| Bee Colony Transportation Tool | Teshome Erge | The bee colony transportation tool is an affordable and efficient equipment for transporting a small number of bee colonies from apiaries to other apiaries and to the bee colony market. | BMC |
| Ethiopian Honey and Beeswax Producers Exporters Association | Alemseged Gebrekidan | Ethiopian Honey and Beeswax Producers Exporters Association is an institution that helps local honey producers and processors to reach to the export global market. Besides that it provides professional consultancy and capacity building activities for beekeepers and honey processors. | BMC not available |
| Samuel Livestock production | Samuel Taye | Samuel Livestock production is a start-up producing honey mix with fruit marmalade, distributing the product with competitive price. | BMC not available |
| Mareg and Fanta | Mareg Franta | Mareg and Fanta is a honey sourcing and packaging company. This SME serves several types of honey from local regions and sells the honey in the urban market. | BMC not available |
| SmartHive | ICEADDIS team | SmartHive is a business manufacturing an all in one smart hives (ready sensors installed hives) and distribute smart hives as a business. | BMC |
| Mar-Tera | ICEADDIS team | Mar-Tera is a physical and digital beekeeping market place to bring and connect all stakeholders of the beekeeping sector including beekeeping equipment (hives, frames, suits, honey extractor, tools etc.), bee products (nectar, beeswax, pollen, bee bread propolis, royal jelly etc.) and apiculture service providers. | BMC |
| NibFinance | ICEADDIS team | NibFinance raises funds and invest in entrepreneurs and start-ups who are working in the apiculture industry. | BMC |
| EneMar | ICEADDIS team | EneMar is a bee education framework which is a holistic system to promote the culture of beekeeping by setting up beekeeping modules in schools and beekeeping clubs, trainings and certifying beekeepers. EneMar also provides a mapped value chain of beekeeping and stakeholders for better market value of bee products. | BMC |
| BeeQ | ICEADDIS team | BeeQ is a business to set up and certifying bee product quality standards. This will help fitting honey adulteration and improves consumer trust on bee products. | BMC |
| NibFM | ICEADDIS team | NibFM is a radio show for beekeepers and all stakeholders of the beekeeping sector. The station will provide information for beekeepers and stakeholders in the industry on topics like best practices, weather forecast, pollination time and market prices. | BMC |
| Ai1H | ICEADDIS team | Ai1H is a concept beehive that allows the beekeeper to harvest bee products as finished material from the hive. | BMC |
| BeeGraden | ICEADDIS team | BeeGraden is a holistic approach to specialty bee products production by setting up beehives around specialized gardens to guarantee the production of premium bee products. | BMC |
| BeeBlock | ICEADDIS team | BeeBlock is a digital platform to build on top of a block chain that guarantee bee product quality. | BMC |
| BeeBuzz | ICEADDIS team | BeeBuzz is a technology that enables communication with bees using special radio signals communicating flower and garden location to optimize the production rate. | BMC |