An ancient African tree is providing a new 'superfood' but local harvesters are barely surviving
The baobab tree is known as the “tree of life” and its fruit is feeding a growing global market for natural food and beauty products
Since childhood, Loveness Bhitoni has collected fruit from the gigantic baobab trees surrounding her homestead in Zimbabwe to add variety to the family’s staple corn and millet diet. The 50-year-old Bhitoni never saw them as a source of cash, until now.
Climate change-induced droughts have decimated her crops. Meanwhile, the world has a growing appetite for the fruit of the drought-resistant baobab as a natural health food.
Bhitoni wakes before dawn to go foraging for baobab fruit, sometimes walking barefoot though hot, thorny landscapes with the risk of wildlife attacks. She gathers sacks of the hard-shelled fruit from the ancient trees and sells them on to industrial food processors or individual buyers from the city.
The baobab trade, which took root in her area in 2018, would previously supplement things like children's school fees and clothing for locals of the small town of Kotwa in northeastern Zimbabwe. Now, it's a matter of survival following the latest devastating drought in southern Africa, worsened by the El Niño weather phenomenon.
