Get more customers and grow your business by adding value to your products.

PUMPKINS save lives. They are drought-resistant and they are rich in the nutrients that keep the dreaded protein deficiency kwashiorkor at bay. In my home country of Uganda, most women grow a few pumpkins all year round to keep their families healthy. They sell their spare pumpkin crop at the local market.

Several years ago, I began helping women to add value to their pumpkin crop in order to transform their lives. I realized that their needs were fairly simple: better seeds and better farming methods and practices; some marketing and financial literacy skills; and, finally, access to modest credit. But most of all, I thought, they needed confidence. They needed to organize themselves and work in groups. Then they would stop thinking that only someone who has had lots of formal education can run a successful business.

In 2012, I began by getting together rural women in the Mityana and Mubende Districts of Uganda. My goals were as simple as their needs: help them increase their household income and food security; help their children and their communities escape malnutrition; reduce unemployment among women; and stop land degradation by teaching women farmers more responsible farming methods.

I founded Josmak International (U) Ltd, known among women farmers as “the Pumpkin Value Addition Enterprise”. It now has have five full-time staff, three of them are women and two of them are men.

With the help of my company, women farmers make and sell pumpkin products, such as pumpkin juice, wine, green powder made from the plant’s leaves and flowers, roasted seeds, and the pumpkin powder which is used to make bread, cakes, cookies, bajias and soups. Nothing goes to waste – the pulp and skin are used as animal feed and manure.

I started in a small way, making products from pumpkins myself to test the market. My first value-added products were pumpkin seeds and pumpkin powder. They needed little capital investment and I knew they had the most nutritional health benefit.

At first I ground the powder using motors that I bought locally and adapted. Later I was able to buy a locally made machine grinder from my profits. I had mentoring from the International Labour Organization (ILO) about how to expand the enterprise. I had financial support from the SEED Initiative, which also helped me to develop a business plan, and with marketing, packaging and creating partnerships.

Now my company has five separate businesses that employ 50 women who grow pumpkins and then add value to their crop. The company’s customers are hospitals, schools, restaurants, hotels, and people who want to give their children nutritional foods and drinks. Commercial bakeries buy the pumpkin powder for bread, cakes and biscuits, and the company’s roasted seeds are in great demand as healthy snacks. We even supply to HIV organizations throughout Uganda.

I have used every marketing method I could think of, reaching out to educate people about the health benefits of pumpkins, and using women’s group networks self-help groups, roadside shows, brochures and posters and door-to-door canvassing. The pumpkin enterprise market is growing because it brings social, environmental, health and economic benefits.

Questions to the reader:

1. Are you making full use of the materials used in your business? Can some materials be used to produce other products?

2. Have you asked your customers, business partners and people who are familiar with your business what they think of your product or service?