Small Fish Farming Opportunity Can Wipe Out Malnutrition
Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 12:01PM
Pioneering work to boost diets across the global South is turning to the smallest of fish. While small in size, tiny fish are packed with nutrition when eaten whole, as they are in many cultures. Often these fish come packed with vitamin A, iron, zinc, calcium, protein and essential fats – all necessary elements to eradicate malnutrition and hidden hunger, especially among women and children.
It is estimated that 684,000 child deaths worldwide could be prevented by increasing access to vitamin A and zinc (WFP).
Iron deficiency is the most prevalent form of malnutrition worldwide, affecting an estimated 2 billion people. Iron deficiency is impairing the mental development of 40 to 60 per cent of children in developing countries (UNICEF). The World Health Organization says that eradicating iron deficiency can improve national productivity levels by as much as 20 percent.
Vitamin A deficiency affects approximately 25 per cent of the developing world’s pre-schoolers. It is associated with blindness, susceptibility to disease and higher mortality rates, and leads to the death of approximately 1 to 3 million children each year (UN).
This devastating evidence shows the need to find effective food solutions to eradicate these nutrient deficiencies. Access to affordable nutrient-rich food is also key to social and political stability. Already, there is serious unrest in many countries around the world because of food-price inflation.
Finding ways to boost nutritional health that are sustainable, low-cost and do not require substantial use of resources will have the best success in the poorest areas.
A number of studies suggest one solution may be eating more small fish. In many countries, these species are eaten as part of the diet, but often not in large enough quantities to address hunger and malnutrition. Small fish species are a remarkable food source because they are usually eaten whole, bringing greater nutritional benefits.
Small fish have a long history in human diets. Anchovies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchovy) are used in many cuisines, for example.
A study conducted between 2010 and 2013 in Bangladesh and Cambodia by Dr. Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted, Senior Nutrition Adviser to WorldFish (worldfishcenter.org), found that the eating of small fish in both countries gave a significant boost to daily diets and massively improved nutrition and health. The project, called Linking Fisheries and Nutrition: Promoting Innovative Fish Production Technologies in Ponds and Wetlands with Nutrient-dense Small Fish Species, was supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
People in both countries still currently suffer from undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies.
In rural areas of Bangladesh and Cambodia it found 50 to 80 per cent of total fish consumed were small fish. The quantities consumed during each meal were small but they occurred in diets frequently. Typically, they were eaten whole, with the head, viscera (internal organs) and bones consumed. This meant consuming small fish packed a punch, giving the eater a dose of calcium, vitamin A, iron and zinc.
More specifically, the study found the iron-rich Mekong flying barb (Esomus longimanus) (http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/169546/0) – eaten as part of a meal of rice and sour soup with its head intact in Cambodia – could provide 45 per cent of the daily iron requirement for a woman.
Malnutrition is also a serious problem in Bangladesh. Half the population lives below the poverty line and diets are poor in delivering necessary vitamins and minerals. This is damaging to peoples’ physical and mental health.
The study found existing fish aquaculture methods in Bangladesh were inefficient. But new technologies provide an opportunity to increase the quantity of fish harvested and increase household incomes. By using highly efficient low-risk polyculture systems – basically combining small, nutrient-dense fish with high-value fish such as carp or freshwater prawn – it is possible to significantly increase the quantity of fish produced.
Another one of the new techniques includes increasing pond depth, which conserves broodfish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broodstock). Broodfish are the mature fish used for the production of eggs or sperm and are also called spawners.
The study estimated a production of 10 kilograms per pond per year of fish spread across the 4 million small ponds in Bangladesh has the potential to meet the recommended dietary intake for 6 million children in the country.
The work in Bangladesh to boost the production of small fish has inspired similar initiatives in Sunderbans, West Bengal, India and in Terai, Nepal. Initiatives in Cambodia and Kenya have also developed meals for young children by combining powdered rice or maize with small fish.
And in Africa, some are calling for more use of aquaculture as an alternative to dwindling fish sources. For sub-Saharan Africans, fish can make up 22 per cent of the protein in their diet.
As populations on the continent quickly rise, marine fisheries are beginning to be over-exploited. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and WorldFish are calling for an aquaculture revolution on the continent to move away from the old approach of just using ponds located on farms. To make a real impact, both organizations argue, there needs to be a partnership between smallholder farmers and others to build a commercial fish farming sector.
“Per capita fish supplies in Africa are dwindling,” Malcolm Beveridge, director for aquaculture at WorldFish, one of the 15 CGIAR research centers (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) (http://www.cgiar.org/cgiar-consortium/research-centers/), that generate and disseminate knowledge, technologies, and policies for agricultural development. “In Malawi, they fell from 10 kilograms to 6 kilograms per person between 1986 and 2006. Aquaculture has the potential to increase supplies of this affordable nutritious food for poor and vulnerable consumers,” he told The Guardian.
By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions
Published: July 2013
Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.
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Burgeoning African E-commerce Industry Full of Opportunity
Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 11:59AM
Africa has seen huge change since 2000 in the way people access information and do business electronically. The most championed accomplishment has been the widespread take-up of mobile phones. This has given birth to countless entrepreneurs and innovators who are using phones to help people, do business and sell goods and services.
Not as quick to spread, mostly because of high cost and poor infrastructure, is access to the Internet. While Web access is taken for granted in many wealthy countries and is increasingly commonplace in many developing nations, Africa as a whole still suffers from poor infrastructure for access to the Internet. But this is changing by the month as more undersea cables connect countries and bandwidth is increased (http://www.submarinecablemap.com/).
Africa’s population can be expected to at least double from 1.1 billion to about 2.3 billion by 2050 – and most will live in urban areas (Population Reference Bureau).
And incomes are rising. Africa is richer than India on the basis of gross national income (GNI) per capita, and a dozen African countries have a higher GNI per capita than China (Africa Rising).
According to the McKinsey Global Institute, “The incomes of these new consuming classes are rising even faster than the number of individuals in the consuming classes. This means that many products and services are hitting take-off points at which their consumption rises swiftly and steeply. By 2025 urban consumers are likely to inject around (US) $20 trillion a year in additional spending into the world economy.”
Research firm Jana (jana.com) – which specializes in emerging markets – studied the consumer preferences of people in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. They surveyed 600 consumers in each country, seeking to unearth what their preferences were when it came to using e-commerce services (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-commerce). E-commerce is the buying and selling of products and services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer-enabled systems. This is still a young industry in Africa and one ripe with opportunity for hardworking and innovative players. Many are starting to realize they had better move fast because this is a market that still has much up for grabs and is not – yet – dominated by mature players such as eBay or Amazon.
The survey uncovered five trends driving e-commerce in Africa. These trends address the unique conditions present in Africa and what challenges need to be met.
The first trend the firm identified is cash on delivery. This has become the main way people do e-commerce in Africa because of the lack of trust in the security of online payments. Cash is still king in the region. The second trend is having a proprietary logistics network. This comes in response to the poor infrastructure present in much of Africa. This has meant e-commerce companies need to take charge of the whole process of getting a good to the customer’s home. This is, of course, costly and places a big restraint on any new company in the e-commerce market.
The third big trend is one that reflects the reality of how people communicate electronically in Africa. Mobile phones are king, and this means e-commerce needs to be mobile phone-friendly or lose out on reaching many customers. The fourth trend is related to the fact Africa is still off the logistics route for much world trade. This means e-commerce companies need to set aside space for large warehouses to store the goods so that they are on hand when the customer wants them.
And, finally, the fifth trend is the importance of good customer service as the clincher for success in the marketplace. Word of mouth gets around if a company is not able to deliver on what is promised so it is important to have high-quality customer service to build trust, keep engaged with consumers and let them know problems are being resolved.
South Africa has emerged as the continent’s powerhouse when it comes to e-commerce, according to Jana. Successful players in that country include Zando (http://www.zando.co.za/) an online fashion store by Rocket Internet, MIH Internet Africa’s Kalahari online store (http://www.kalahari.com/) and entertainment and consumer electronics online store Takealot.com supported by Tiger Global. Research firm World Wide Worx (http://www.worldwideworx.com/) calculated that online retail in South Africa is growing by 30 per cent a year.
But South Africa cannot rest on its laurels: the survey found Nigeria is fast overtaking South Africa as its large population takes to the Internet. Impressively, Nigeria’s Government has pledged to expand broadband Internet access to 80 per cent of the country over the next five years.
In East Africa, Kenya’s Rocket Internet’s service Jumia (http://www.jumia.co.ke/) is now one of the top 100 online destinations in the country.
Jana also found there were various key areas for improvement for the e-commerce industry in Africa. One, was the importance of explaining to African consumers the basics of online shopping. Many respondents to the survey seemed confused about making purchases on the Internet and through e-commerce. They also showed low levels of understanding about payment methods and available financial products. And finally, one of the big obstacles to expanding the industry is improving delivery reliability.
But all these problems and challenges spell opportunity for innovators who can solve them and make some money too!
By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions
Published: July 2013
Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.
Follow @SouthSouth1
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Staple Foods Are Becoming More Secure in the South
Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 11:56AM
Finding ways to ensure food security in countries experiencing profound economic and social change and stress is critical to achievement of development goals.
Food security is crucial to ensuring economic development is sustainable, and it is vital to long-term human health. Just one bout of famine can damage a generation of youth, stunting brain development and leaving bodies smaller and weaker than they should be.
Thankfully, many innovators are working on this problem and are making significant progress. A report from the Asian Development Bank, The Quiet Revolution in Staple Food Value Chains (http://www.adb.org/publications/quiet-revolution-staple-food-value-chains), found improvements to security of rice and potatoes – common staple foods in many countries. It said the so-called value chains – the various activities a company does to deliver a product or service to the marketplace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_chain) – for potatoes and rice have seen significant improvements in Bangladesh, China and India.
This is important because improvements in access to staple foods will mean better food security and less threat of extreme hunger events. This matters because it just takes one extreme hunger event and a generation is scarred for life.
The human brain is a heavy user of energy: it uses between 20 and 30 per cent of a person’s energy intake. Failure to consume enough calories means brain functioning begins to be altered (brain-guide.org).
Hunger and starvation slow a person’s mental responsiveness. Low energy intake from minimal diets leads to apathy, sadness and depression. Fetuses and infants are especially sensitive to brain damage caused by malnutrition. A malnourished child can suffer life-long low intelligence and cognitive defects.
More than 70 per cent of the world’s 146 million underweight children aged five and under live in just 10 countries, with more than 50 per cent located in South Asia alone (UNICEF). A quarter of all children – roughly 146 million – in developing countries are underweight, and it is estimated that 684,000 child deaths worldwide could be prevented by increasing access to vitamin A and zinc (WFP).
Undernutrition contributes to 53 per cent of the 9.7 million deaths of children under five each year in developing countries (UNICEF).
Food insecurity also shows on the faces of people who experience it. This extreme stress scars people and harms their prospects in the labour market and their ability to improve their incomes.
Why is access to staple foods improving? It seems, according to the report, to result from innovations such as rapid modernization, with the increasing roll out of supermarkets, the use of cold storage facilities and large rice mills. It also cites the impact of small farmers taking on modern technologies, such as mechanized farming, and making the most of soil by using fertilizers and efficient techniques.
Supermarkets by their nature encourage highly sophisticated supply lines to ensure a steady stream of fresh produce coming in from farms to urban areas. Because of the variety and vast range of produce on offer, they require finely-tuned organizing models and information technologies. In short, they radically alter the way people buy their food, and what people will expect from food providers.
By negotiating deals with farmers, supermarkets create stability, as well as low and competitive prices. They allow for better traceability for food and give consumers more confidence in what they are purchasing. They use cold storage, which means food lasts longer and there is less waste than if food is left to spoil in a marketplace without refrigeration – a revolutionary change in hot countries.
The downside with supermarkets, as has been the case in some countries, is they can quickly dominate the marketplace and push out all other competitors with their economies of scale. When this happens, farmers can also find themselves with little bargaining power again and be hostage to the price the supermarket tells them to sell their product at.
Another critical improvement is the rapid spread of mobile phones. Armed with a mobile phone, small-scale farmers are able to access critical knowledge and information. This means they can make better decisions and quickly adjust what they are doing when mistakes are made.
The survey found that India is a country where the food-supply game has changed dramatically. In the past, traders would advance cash to farmers in the form of loans. But since the use of mobile phones has increased, the balance of power has shifted: farmers now have many other options to finance their operations than turning to middlemen and traders. This means they are no longer as easily manipulated by the traders and can negotiate better prices. Also, better roads, combined with greater competition to provide services to farmers, are improving farming of staple foods in general.
Among potato farmers in rural areas, 73 to 97 per cent have mobile phones and use them to organize deals with traders or receive market information. The take-up of mobile phones was also a recent development for the farmers: most had acquired a mobile phone in the last four years.
It is clear this quiet revolution in food security for staples is a result of greater use of innovative technology and taking on of new techniques.
By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions
Published: July 2013
Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.
Follow @SouthSouth1
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African Innovators Celebrated in Prize
Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 11:53AM
Innovation is increasingly being recognized as the key to tackling long-standing development problems in Africa, as well as across the developing and developed world. While it is easy to draw up a list of challenges facing the global South, it takes a special person to see not problems but solutions.
Innovation tends to mean fresh thinking brought to bear to old problems, or completely radical new technologies, insights and ways of doing things that are transformative.
The Oslo Manual for measuring innovation (http://www.oecd.org/innovation/inno/oslomanualguidelinesforcollectingandinterpretinginnovationdata3rdedition.htm) has defined four types of innovation: product innovation, process innovation, marketing innovation and organizational innovation (OECD).
Product innovation is a good or service that is new or significantly improved. This includes significant improvements in technical specifications, components and materials, software in the product, user friendliness or other functional characteristics. Process innovation is a new or significantly improved production or delivery method. This includes significant changes in techniques, equipment and/or software. Marketing innovation is defined as a new marketing method involving significant changes in product design or packaging, product placement, product promotion or pricing. And finally, organizational innovation is a new organizational method in business practices, workplace organization or external relations.
How quickly these can be brought to the marketplace, and the level of innovation in society, will be critical to a country’s success in the coming decade, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Importantly, innovation is being seen as the big driver of economic progress and well-being and the best way to deal with the plethora of challenges facing human health and the environment.
As an example, in the past decade, communications innovation has given more and more of the world’s population access to mobile phones and the Internet. This has led to the success of many new companies, from the search engine giant Google to multiple software innovations such as Kenya’s M-Pesa mobile phone banking application (http://www.safaricom.co.ke/personal/m-pesa/m-pesa-services-tariffs/relax-you-have-got-m-pesa), to small and innovative companies spreading the innovation bug such as Pico Crickets (http://www.picocricket.com/) or the Raspberry Pi (http://www.raspberrypi.org/).
As the OECD has said, “Not only has innovation moved to centre stage in economic policymaking, but there is a realization that a coordinated, coherent, ‘whole of government’ approach is required.
“Even countries that have generally refrained from active industrial policy in recent years now seek new ways to improve the environment for innovation in order to boost productivity and growth. Today, innovation performance is a crucial determinant of competitiveness and national progress.”
In the past, African innovators mostly went unacknowledged, unsupported and unrecognized. But this is changing, as new resources come online to support, finance, encourage and champion African innovators. Until very recently, people outside the continent heard little positive news about what was happening there. But the African innovator story is an inspiration to people around the world.
The Innovation Prize for Africa (http://innovationprizeforafrica.org), begun in 2011, awards US $100,000 for the top innovation that matches its criteria of marketability, originality, scalability, social impact and business potential.
The prize aims to encourage people to come up with practical solutions to the continent’s long-standing problems. This year’s prize received 900 applications from 45 countries.
The 2013 prize went to the South Africa-based AgriProtein (http://www.agriprotein.com) team for an innovation that uses waste and fly larvae to produce animal feed. The solution collects biodegradable waste and then feeds it to flies. The larvae the flies produce are then ground into a protein which is used as a feed for animals. Not only does this approach improve the nutritional quality of the feed, it also lowers the cost for African processors and farmers.
This year’s finalists offer a mixed bag of innovations, including creative ways to find new energy sources, improving access to clean water and preventing diseases.
Joining a clutch of other South African finalists, Dr. Dudley Jackson has created the SavvyLoo, a waterless toilet for use in rural areas and makeshift settlements. It separates the waste into liquids and solids to reduce the risk of disease, odour, and harm to the environment and eases waste removal.
Another South African, Professor Eugene Cloete, is the inventor of the TBag Water Filter that cleverly uses material recovered from tea bags to filter polluted water until it is completely safe to drink.
When it comes to the thorny issue of finding new energy sources for an energy-hungry continent, the prize unearthed some interesting solutions. One is Justus Nwaoga, a Nigerian finalist, who developed a way to turn a common weed into a source of renewable solar energy.
Nwaoga, a researcher from the Department of Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Nigeria Nsukka (http://unn.edu.ng/), found the common tropical weed Mimosa pudica (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimosa_pudica) surprisingly provides a way to tap into the sun’s energy.
The weed has leaves which fold in on themselves when touched, but spring quickly back into their normal form when exposed to daylight. The plant opens up in the morning and closes in the evening – an indicator of how sensitive it is to sunlight.
Nwaoga began to experiment with the plant, subjecting it to artificial light at night to see if the leaves would open up again. But they didn’t. He came to the conclusion there were properties in the leaves that only responded to natural, solar light. He further concluded it had something to do with electrical transmission in the leaves. He isolated the element that was making the leaves respond to solar light, finding it more sensitive than the silicon solar cell used in solar panels.
Other innovators recognized by the prize include a Tunisian research and development startup called Saphon Energy (http://www.saphonenergy.com/), which makes bladeless wind turbines, and Muna Majoud Mahoamed Ahmed from Sudan, who has created the Agroforestry Model Farm in Khartoum.
“We see a strong trend emerging of innovations that have significant social impact for Africa,” Dr.Francois Bonnici, director of the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, told Ventures Africa.
The call for applications for the 2014 Prize will be announced in July 2013.
By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions
Published: June 2013
Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.
Follow @SouthSouth1
Google Books: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HfZcAwAAQBAJ&dq=development+challenges+june+2013&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/DavidSouth1/development-challenges-june-2013-issue
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New Beer Helping to Protect Elephants
Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 11:52AM
How to match the often conflicting goals of protecting animal habitats and supporting local economies? One clever solution may draw amusement but is actually a sharp marketing strategy to get attention for a product that is helping to preserve the elephants of Thailand’s Golden Triangle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Triangle_(Southeast_Asia).
A beer flavored with a special ingredient – coffee beans that have passed through elephants – is generating profits that are plowed back into improving health services for the animals. The coffee beans excreted by elephants are roasted and turned into a high-quality coffee by a company in Thailand; this coffee is then used by a Japanese company to make a special beer brand that is getting attention and winning rave reviews.
The elephant dung coffee beans used in the beer are called Black Ivory (http://www.blackivorycoffee.com) and come from Thailand’s Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation (http://www.helpingelephants.org). According to The Drinks Business, the coffee beans retail for US $100 per 35 grams.
The beans are of the Thai Arabica variety and grow at an elevation of 1,500 metres. Elephants consume the coffee cherries and excrete the beans as part of their diet. Once the elephants have excreted the beans in their faeces they are harvested, processed, sun dried and roasted.
It takes 10,000 beans to make a kilogram of roasted coffee, according to the Black Ivory website. A total of 33 kilograms of coffee cherries are consumed by the elephants to make a kilogram of the Black Ivory coffee.
Elephants in Thailand are used for various activties, from heavy work to providing rides for tourists. The riders of the elephants – called mahouts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahout) – and their wives also benefit from the manufacturing and sale of the coffee. The income is used to pay for health costs, school fees, food and clothing.
Additionally, 8 per cent of the proceeds from the sale of the coffee beans pays for a veterinarian to provide care to the elephants. The money is also used to pay for their medicine and the setting up of a laboratory.
Elephants are much-revered in Thailand and feature in the country’s national iconography. They are listed as Protected Animals under Thailand’s Conservation Act 1992 (FAO). Many believe they should be classified as endangered. The last survey on the population was conducted in 1991 and elephant numbers were recorded as 1,900 (FAO).
The main threat to elephants comes from humans – in the form of poaching for the animals’ ivory tusks, their abuse in begging on the streets, and the destruction of forests where the elephants live.
The natural habitat and feeding grounds for the elephants have shrunk over the past decades. It is estimated the forest area in Thailand shrank from 80 per cent to 20 per cent between 1957 and 1992. Causes include major infrastructure projects, increasing farmland and the building of large resorts, all encroaching on the elephants’ territory. Limited space means elephants increasingly come into conflict with humans and this can lead to them being poisoned or killed.
But the success of the Japanese-brewed Kono Kuro beer is creating a new funding source for helping the elephants and doing some good.
The beer is brewed by Sankt Gallen Brewery (http://www.sanktgallenbrewery.com) in Kanagawa, Japan using the Black Ivory coffee beans, imparting the beer with an earthy flavour. It may sound like a gimmick, but consumers have remarked on the beer’s distinctive taste, and sales do not lie: it has been a quick success, selling out within minutes of its launch in Japan.
The beer comes in dark bottles with a sandy coloured label elegantly illustrated with pictograms showing the process of turning the beans excreted by the elephants into beer. It is a humorous visual tale that makes the label stand out from other beer brands.
Brewer Sankt Gallen calls it a “chocolate stout” because of its rich, earthy flavour (it does not contain any chocolate, however).
Although bottles of the stout sold out after going on sale on the Sankt Gallen website, the brewery has said that it has plans to put the beer on tap at its new shop, which opened in Tokyo recently.
By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions
Published: June 2013
Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.
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