Mamma Africa

Mama Africa is a revolutionary, organic and sustainable project that was born in the heart of Africa.

The idea arose in Burundi, a small coffee producer country. It is one of the poorest nations in the world, coffee is one of the few livelihoods and accounts for 80 percent of the country’s GDP. Burundi today produces only washed coffee, in the Kayanza area we have created an experimental center called Kawasili together with Shamba.

In this center of analysis and control, but above all of daily relationship with farmers, agricultural knowledge and training is provided with the aim of obtaining four important revolutions.

The first revolution is to work a Burundian coffee with the natural method, a product that does not exist on the market today. The second revolution is to raise awareness and directly help farmers to join organized cooperatives. This system of sharing typical of Latin American communities is not widespread or known in Africa, where the small farmer still sells his crop, often obtained in a primitive way, to the first trader who passes by.

The third will be to help them in the organic certification. Almost all small producers in Burundi do not fertilize or use pesticides. For this reason they are already almost all organic producers but they don’t know they are and they don’t know that their product can have more value. Kawasili will take care of certifying them. The fourth revolution will be in the payment: too often, once Burundian men collect the money from the sale of their agricultural products they go to the city and squander most of the proceeds. To try to resolve this problem we act in a new but already tested and functioning way. Before the agreement, the whole family is called upon, in the presence of the father but also of the children and especially of the mother. The family is informed that by bringing their coffee to Kawasili, they will get better remuneration and other important advantages. The man must promise in front of witnesses that he is willing to accept that it is his wife to collect the sum due or that in any case she is made aware of the amount due to the family when Kawasili will pay them, she must agree that the wife participates with him at the time of payment. This method was formalized together with Avsi, a non-profit organization that carries out humanitarian and development projects.

We believe that the richest and most conscious communities such as the European one, can and should act directly on the less developed territories, providing support above all agricultural and resetting the old criterion of donating to transform it into the principle of making. And to support and participate directly with a real presence, a physical presence above all, offering knowledge, experience, method and technical support. This participatory action can contribute to an important change. It can grow an evolution that leads to the improvement of local life prospects. This improvement can produce a reduction in the migration rates by counteracting the depopulation of the countryside and protecting belonging to the place of origin. We believe that this belonging can be a cultural wealth and, in the future, also an economic one.

Pascucci with his direct presence will monitor the changes and evolutions of the product, strengthening interaction and direct relationship with farmers. This interaction increases their production capacity and social growth and at the same time allows Pascucci to obtain an increasingly valuable quality product, a coffee according to our needs, certified, natural, with a higher value.