By Lekereni Chinkhota

Salima, September 7, Mana: Christian Aid has shown interest and commitment to place value on the underutilized bamboo to economically empower and transform the lives of people in Salima through the production of materials from bamboo.

Speaking on Friday after engaging the District Executive Committee (DEC), Project Officer for Bamboo Value Chain Enterprise Development project, Mtendere Chitete said Christian Aid aims at promoting value addition of bamboo products.

“We are here to promote value addition of bamboo products some of which are already on the market and some that will be introduced via the same project. We want to assist the communities who are already in production of these bamboo products to improve the quality.” he said.

Chitete said the products that are already available on the markets are of low value, which makes people not to appreciate the value bamboos can have locally and internationally.

“Artisans that are already making bamboo products have a challenge of using low-quality products because they use hand-made tools. We want to assist them to start producing high-quality products which can fetch them higher income,” he said.

Chitete emphasized that the artisans have had problems to access better markets, which will be solved by the coming in of the project, as it will be a platform to promote their markets for them to sell more of the products.

The artisans will be organized in groups, given training and assisted to penetrate various markets through the introduced mobile app where the artisans will be able to market their products, how to access and press orders to increase their markets.

Director of Lands and Public Works at Salima District Council Harris Kumwenda said the bamboo products will be of value to the people in the district as they will be equipped with proper skills on how best they can utilize the products.

“It is a good technology because bamboo is highly versatile, highly comparable if we talk of steel and they are equally strong that it can be used as a building material or other purposes that can withstand the forces that we go through,” he said.

He said as a district they have welcomed the development with the availability of bamboo in the district that mostly mismanaged and misused by various members of the communities.

People from the Thuma area as well as along the Salima-Lilongwe road at Katengeza will be the ones to benefit from the training first-hand.

Christian Aid aims to start producing bamboo bee hives, and energy sources among valuable products it plans to introduce in due course.