Planting trees in the jungle of Congo required of us to hire the best brain in palm planting industry. We also needed the flexibility to consult external agencies as we embarked on implementing our ideas. The work was to be based in the village; and the state of life in the villages is not appealing for many Congolese of high calibre. There is no electricity, no hot water, and food is foraged from the forest, making it increasingly unreliable. The experts in this field prefer to live in Kinshasa and affluent towns.
Fortunately, Jean Paul Bambokela Joined us to manage the project. A confident, experienced individual and a master of village life. We ensured that he is equipped with best tools to accomplish his tasks. With hard work and determination, he managed to form a resilient team that has proven itself capable to take on any task thrown at it and excel. Every year, he spends eight months in the village ensuring that the project is run smoothly and four months in Kinshasa.
Health concern
With our operations based in the jungle of Congo where there are barely any medical facilities, we quickly realised the need for a medical professional to be in place to provide basic care to our team and their family.
We were once more fortunate to be joined by Emanuel Emamela, a qualified nurse with years of experience in providing primary health care in the region.
Quickly, he has proven to be a reference to the team and people of the surrounding villages. He is hard working, determined, creative and has completely immersed himself into the vision of the Lingofe Project.
Our employees get free basic medical treatment from our nurse and are referred to the general hospital if the nurse cannot manage their illness. This has brought confidence to people and their support for the Lingofe Project is now unshakeable.
It is said that “The greatest wealth is health”. Investing in good health is an intrinsic part of our project. To cater for this, we are now supporting one student from this village to become a medical doctor. The student has started his first year of medical studies at University in Kinshasa and we are sure that upon successful completion of her studies, she will return home to provide the needed medical knowledge.
A we proceed with future work, it is our intention to build a modern hospital that will provide advanced medical treatment and eliminate the unacceptable birth death rate that devastate women her.
Ememela is doing a great job which we are proud.
What should we plant?
In the agriculture business, one quickly realises that everything must be done the right way, and that this may become costly in the future. Thus the need for external palm consultants to help us choose the right seeds to buy, where to buy them from, etc.
Suddenly, logistics became a challenge. As Congo does not have facilities for germinated palm seeds, we needed to import from outside. The unreliable means of transport in the Congo made it a huge challenge to ensure that the seeds were planted within a couple of days of their arrival in Kinshasa. If it takes longer than needed, the seed may rot. Thanks to the creativity of our team in Kinshasa, we managed to get around these challenges without issues.
We set up palm nurseries and followed all the sciences to the letter. Nothing could be done without the approval of our external consultants. Six months later, we were ready to move from nurseries to planting in the fields.
As the planting work started, it became evident that we could utilise some of our land to plant maize. This will bring in some money to alleviate other costs.
Planting maize
It is said that opportunities arise when you least expect them. As we were focussed on planting palm trees, Jean Paul Bambokela realised that we could also plant maize at the same time as we plant palm trees, then harvest Maize keeping the land undisturbed for palm trees to grow.
Last year we produced 10 metric tons of Maize and sold them in Kinshasa. This brought in money that financed the planting of nursery trees to the field totalling fifteen hectares. From nursery that started in March 2021 to planting in the field around May 2022. We surmounted many challenges, and we are extremely excited about our prospects.
Year 2023 Palm nursery and palm planting
In the year 2022, we doubled our nursery capacity. As our knowledge and experience increased, we became much more confident and started taking more challenges. This year we have planted a field totalling thirty hectares bringing our project to a total of forty-five hectares of palm trees that are systematically planted with standard palm tree farming techniques.
In the meantime, this year we have embarked in our most ambitious palm nursery with a total of sixteen thousand trees. We are very excited about the future without undermining the amount of work required to get these new nursery trees to the field. This will bring our plantation to its full potential and move us to solving problems related to production mechanisation and transportation.
With a challenging future ahead of us, we have set up a team to research on finding solutions to finance the purchase of a mini palm processing plant to mechanise our palm processing as soon as the first plantation generation comes into production.
Palm oil processing
The science behind palm oil processing is immense. Unknown to us was the difference between artisanal and industrial processing. Initially, we procured a palm oil expeller machine from China. We were going to use this machine to process palm oil from the palm trees left to us by our late father.
Unfortunately, nuts from these palm fruits were too big and had less flesh. This clogged the machine, and a different approach was needed. We resorted to traditional means of processing palm oil. For the year 2022, we produced 15 tons of palm oil and managed to sign a contract with one of Congo’s biggest buyers of palm oil.
To our surprise, our client claimed that our palm oil was artisanal, and he was going to pay a lesser price. He explained the difference in price which totally depends on the level of acid in the palm oil.
Following some discussions, he decided to buy at full price from us for the next two years while we upgrade our palm oil processing mechanism. He gave us some contacts which we have been in touch and are fully informed of what we need to do to meet international oil market standards.
The key to achieving our goal relies on mechanising our production process.
We will write more on our progress to mechanisation soon.
We wish everyone working with us a fruitful year.
