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Thunderbird helps Ethiopia sell honey to the worldThunderbird helps Ethiopia sell honey to the world

Red rock churches hewn out of the mountaintops bring a trickle of tourists to the Hawzien district of Ethiopia, but Thunderbird student Charles Reeves knows the real economic treasure for local farmers could be white honey.

“Maybe the best honey I’ve tasted has been unprocessed from a farmer, kneeling in the sun and dust at the local market across the street from our office,” said Reeves, an independent study student working in Ethiopia. “This is the honey we are looking to mass produce, refine and market as a premium product in Middle Eastern and Western markets.”

Reeves and teams of classmates working in Arizona with Thunderbird Professor Michael Finney, Ph.D., have joined a global initiative to help African farmers produce and distribute local commodities such as Ethiopian honey, mangos, cocoa, pineapples and shea butter.

The Millennium Villages Project, commissioned by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan as part of the Millennium Project, aims to reverse the effects of poverty in Africa by finding global markets for many of these products.

“You could be buying honey next year in the United States or the Middle East that came out of these hives in Ethiopia,” Finney said. “That’s as global as it gets.”

Reeves, who works in the Hawzien district of Tigrai, Ethiopia, has assumed a leading role in the effort to launch a beekeeping and honey production cooperative of 1,500 farmers. He surveys beehive sites, works with cooperative leaders and meets with prospective investors, honey processors and exporters.

The ultimate goal is to establish a self-sufficient and sustainable operation.

“I’m on the inside of this effort working to make a difference for people,” Reeves said. “The ultimate development goal is to remove the development agents — myself, Millennium Villages and aid money — from the equation.”

Reeves works closely with Millennium Villages micro-enterprise coordinator Tadesse Berhe and reports to Rustom Masalawala, the Millennium Villages director who helped bring Thunderbird into the project. Awash Teklehaimanot, an Ethiopian professor, serves on the Millennium Villages board and is one of the task force coordinators of the United Nations Millennium Project led by Jeffrey Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University.

By the second and third years of the project, organizers in Ethiopia hope to produce 700 tons or more of excess honey annually.

“They’re not going to be able to consume it locally,” Finney said. “So they’re going to need to reach international markets, where demand is high.”

Students in Finney’s international consulting class are working on the global supply chain for the project. Another team of Thunderbird students is looking at branding opportunities for the honey and other Millennium Villages products.

Finney said the project provides a complex learning laboratory for students and real value for clients. “There’s intrinsic benefit for every element of the supply chain,” he said.