JUBA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- South Sudanese local agricultural innovations are slowly gaining recognition amid difficulty in financing and high operational costs due to lack of infrastructure further compounded by the more than three years of violence.
Oil-rich South Sudan is endowed with vast arable land for agriculture and about 38 million livestock, and yet all hope is not lost as few South Sudanese are seeking to utilize the existing agricultural potential in a country where famine was in February declared in the northern parts.
Sarah Sibrino, 25, operates Rhanika Company Limited, specializing in using products like coconut, avocado and honey to make oil products for both hair and skin preservation, told Xinhua that they seek to harness the existing potential in agriculture to grow the business.
"We make natural products from cheer butter, coconut and avocado oil, vitamin E and also we use essential oil to enhance the scent," she revealed on Wednesday at the Juba agricultural exhibition.
She says the idea of starting up the business came up when her mother bought for her natural cheer butter oil, whose scent was never appreciated by her associates and she then sought solutions to improving on the product by exploring with other local oil products, hence earning her breakthrough.
"I figured out there are some people who may not really like cheer butter and they would still love oil for the skin, so we have this blend minti and gold locks which are coming up," Sibrino added.
Sibrino adds that they are promoting health natural products which cost between 7-10 U.S. dollars.
Besides locally made oil products, she says they have also started making soap from sesame and avocado.
Despite, her products gaining recognition in the market, Sibrino says the economic hardship amid high taxes and costs of imported materials have affected her small business.
"My products are a bit expensive to make right now because I get cheer butter, Sesame from here locally, but the containers are imported all the way from China, Malaysia," she disclosed.
"We don't have factories that make containers yet. When you look at avocado oil I really wish we could have companies that press these oils," explained Sibrino who is eyeing neighboring Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya to try her products.
Meanwhile, Kidi Samuel, 51, who works with Enviro limited that makes herbal medicines from natural trees and plants, told Xinhua he is optimistic of the potential of their medicine, Kinda, made of local herbs and oil that cures rectum hemorrhage and has been tested and approved by health authorities.
"We are promoting local herbs. There are a lot of diseases in South Sudan but at the same time there are a lot of herbs which are not yet well tapped. So we want to harness our environment to solve our problems," he said.
However, he is quick to concede that they are incurring huge costs due to lack of enough infrastructure like power and also packaging costs for their products.
"The challenge is we need a law which can regulate this (herbal) business because we don't want to remain here. We want to go out and we need something the government has endorsed and also power is not yet there for us to come out with something big," he said.
Kidi also says that the lack of laws regulating herbal medicine and research affects the quality of their business and urges government to set up these two key issues.
Mary Simba, from Kuru Ko Wate a local agro processing company started by women in May this year says they have taken advantage of cultivating vegetable varieties near the Nile River cultivate which they dry under the sun and air and later on package and label for sell in the market.
"We grow varieties of vegetables near the Nile River, cut them and dry them with the sun and air. After that we make our packaging and then put the labeling," Simba said.
She further says with the aid of irrigation during the long dry season throughout the year, they have managed to make food spices, chili and also grow ginger which they sell at affordable prices.
