What We Do

PhytoTrade Africa’s role is to help Southern Africa’s natural products industry to achieve rapid growth while ensuring its long term sustainability and social equity. We do this in three key ways: product development, market development and supply chain development.

Product Development

PhytoTrade Africa carries out ongoing research to identify - and build the business case for - new products that have commercial potential in either regional or global markets. Through collaborative agreements with private sector partners, we leverage complementary R&D and work together to bring products to market. We focus on a limited range of products for which there is demonstrable market demand and which are suited to small-scale rural production.

New Southern African products brought to market so far include:

• Baobab fruit powder and baobab fruit extract developed for the global food and drink market in association with South African ingredients manufacturer Afriplex.
• The Ubuntu™ range of high quality oils for cosmetic manufacturers developed in association with French company Aldivia.
• Extracts of Kigelia – the African sausage tree – developed for the international cosmetics market with Afriplex and UK-based Blue Sky Botanics.

For further information on our products, click here.

Market Development

PhytoTrade Africa proactively identifies existing and potential market opportunities and partners, and helps to establish links between our members and export buyers. We also work to raise market awareness of, and demand for, our members’ products, for example, by exhibiting at international trade fairs and conducting PR and marketing campaigns.
Where necessary we work to overcome regulatory hurdles in order to develop new markets for our members. For example, in 2008 we secured an EU Novel Foods decision that allows our members to supply baobab fruit to the European food and drink market. This is a new and potentially valuable market opportunity, and one which our members were unable to secure independently given the long, complex and costly process involved.

Supply Chain Development

PhytoTrade Africa provides technical and business development advisory services to its members in order to create reliable and enduring supply chains across the region. We coordinate production to meet the volume requirements of the market and assist our members to attain the required quality standards for export.

We are increasingly assisting members to achieve organic and Fair Trade certification for their products, enabling them to tap into this growing global market.