This project is focussed on empowering rural women on Kome Island, Tanzania through beekeeping. Women will be given beekeeping training and support, hive materials and basic beekeeping equipment. Women will be given the skills and confidence to provide for themselves and their families through learning how to be good beekeepers and to manage the harvesting and selling of honey and wax. Taught to incorporate beekeeping with conservation agriculture, they will see increased crop yield through pollination. The project will also provide training and employment for a female beekeeping trainer for future projects in Tanzania.

This project will focus on the women living in different villages on Kome, a rural island on Lake Victoria in Tanzania. Kome Island is inhabited by around 50,000 people, most of them from the Wazinza tribe. There is very limited infrastructure on the island; its main economic activity is subsistence farming. The people on the island, particularly the women and their children, face many poverty-related issues (affecting health and education) and are seeing a continual decrease in their crop yields and degradation of the natural ecosystem. We are focussing on empowering female beekeepers, to enable these women to earn money to support their children, providing for their education and healthcare.

The first phase of the Kome Island Women’s Beekeeping project trained thirty women in the village of Nyamkolechiwa. The second phase is focussing on training a second group of women living in the neighbouring village of Nyabintu on the island. The third phase moves to train women in the village Nyamiswi. Female participants for the project are selected in consultation with our local partner organization, Emmanuel InternationaI, based on expressed interest with clear need.

Each group of women will be given beekeeping training through classroom teaching with manuals followed by practical field training. The group will be given the materials for 60 hives and basic beekeeping equipment. Local carpenters will be trained how to make the hives and women trained in making bee suits with local materials. The group participants will be given ongoing support and further training on topics from hive making and hanging, to hive care and problem solving, honey harvesting and processing and selling. There will be training given on making value-added products, such as beeswax candles and balms. The group participants will be given business training and support, which will help them to generate income through the sales of their honey and wax harvests and start other projects with their “honey money.” Ideally, their first harvest will yield 350kg from 45 colonised hives, resulting in a potential £1350 in honey sales). This will have a long-term impact on improved livelihoods with money available for healthcare and education costs and extra capital to support further entrepreneurial ventures. The women will be taught to incorporate beekeeping with conservation agriculture techniques, which combined with bee pollination will increase their crop yield and food security. Women will be given 400 tree seedlings and the training and support to establish and care for tree nurseries which help the group and their village to improve their environment and raise extra income through sales.

As we continue to support the growth and development of each group, we will focus on training of trainers so that future groups grow and develop through help from the initial groups.