Peanut butter is loved by many, not only is it an important ingredient to make a delicious sandwich, it
is nutritious and affordable. With modern-day food and agro-processing technology, peanut, the
main ingredient in peanut butter, can be processed into multiple new products and recipes making it
a lucrative crop to trade in.
We recently started working with the recently established Groutville Peanut Butter Corporative,
(Groutville in KwaZulu Natal), an organisation made up of women and their children who are intent
on making an income for themselves and creating wealth using natural resources that are freely
available. Women from this community have, for decades been harvesting peanuts and selling them
with the intent to put food on the table.
Now, through the corporative, they have added peanut butter manufacturing to their portfolio and have produced the first Chief Albert Luthuli Peanut Butter, named after the late Chief Albert Luthuli, an anti-apartheid activist and Nobel Prize Laureate.
As we have been educating the corporate on finding ways to be part of a lucrative value chain, we
learned that peanuts are native to South Africa and well adapted to our climate, especially the
warmer parts of South Africa. The beauty of this crop is that it can be explored in many forms and
has the potential for lucrative economic benefits.
For the corporative manufacturing peanut butter is a natural progression, from what the community
has always been doing, harvesting and selling the nuts. They widely grow along in their background
along Mvoti River banks, right in their backyards, which means production costs are less.
For us, the mission to form a lucrative business is on track, the corporate recently met with a
representative of the Department of Social Development (DSD) Mr. Oscar Mpetha, and the United
Nations Food Programme representative, Mr. Ashraf Sha in KwaDukuza to discuss support to the
cooperative for a sustainable peanut butter project.
Next on the to-do list for Groutville, is to equip the members of the corporative with skills to help
them grow their yield using existing government resources such as the Small Enterprise Development
Agency (Seda) and the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA). There is still a lot of work to be
done by the corporative.
The Groutville project forms part of AL JAMA-AH Villagers League, a project aimed at transforming
villages into smart villages with the aim to spearheading job creation through small businesses that
are established within villages.
Ganief Hendricks is ALJAMA-AH party leader and a member of Parliament, and a member of the
portfolio committee on small business. He has been working very closely with Parliamentary
Constituency office in Stanger which does Seda work mobilising locals to benefit from government
grants and projects.
