SIDO: Local transformation through investment

Historically palm tree has been a traditional crop in Kigoma, it produces palm oil for cooking and kernel oil for soap manufacturing.  In Kigoma Ujiji Municipality that is where SIDO industrial park situated, most of the kernel produced in Kigoma rural are processed at SIDO, it is estimated that 3 Kg of kernel nuts make 1 litre of oil. It takes 4-7 days for an aggressive woman to dry 660 kg of the kernel which produce 220 litres of oil, daily capacity at the park is 3 tons per day per one machine.

UNCDF through Kigoma Joint Programme supported SIDO industrial park to completely transform how the kernel nuts are dried and clarified by providing modern machinery for drying and clarification of oil.

Tabitha Charles (42) a mother of 2 children from SIDO industries. She says, “I joined SIDO a few years ago, before that, I used to sell clothes. Our biggest challenge was the time we spend drying our crops, it took us up to 5 days for the crops to be completely dry”. She adds, “Of late the business wasn’t good, as the weather condition was not encouraging, we experienced very heavy rain. The kernel nuts couldn’t dry on time, it took almost a month. It was also difficult for us to get firewood’s to help us in the clarification process. I couldn’t sell my products on time which made me fail to get money to pay for my son’s school fees. 

Tabitha believes that they we’ll no longer spend much time drying our crops using traditional sun dryers which weren’t efficient compare to modern machines. “Our production capacity will also increase because we will be able to buy more crops and produce more oil”.