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FRUITO employees rinse passion fruit. USADF is working with this Burundi-based company to improve income levels of factory workers and farmers.

In the early 1980’s, Marie Muque Kigoma began a juice business in her back yard by hand squeezing passion fruit into juice. She poured that juice into recycled bottles, which she sold to neighborhood families, restaurants, and supermarkets in Burundi’s capital, Bujumbura. Working as a full-time nurse and raising her three children, Kigoma needed the extra income to make ends meet.

Today, she runs FRUITO, Burundi’s most successful juice company, which employs 50 full-time workers and buys from more than 1,800 small scale farmers. With her ‘never give up’ attitude and support from the United States African Development Foundation (USADF), Kigoma epitomizes the truth that success is possible despite overwhelming odds and circumstances.

Kigoma encountered and overcame an onslaught of obstacles along her road to prosperity. Early on, a bottle shortage in Burundi left her without a means of packaging her juice. On the verge of quitting her start-up business, Kigoma’s husband encouraged her to persevere. But Burundi’s four-month dry season continued to plague FRUITO. Without a proper refrigeration container, Kigoma’s business couldn’t store enough juice to continue sales during the dry season. As a result, she had to annually downsize her company, forcing her hard-working employees to scramble to find alternative sources of income.

And then in 1993 came the Burundi Civil War, a 12-year ethnic conflict that claimed 300,000 lives and forced many private businesses, including FRUITO, to shut down. But Kigoma was not ready to give up. After three years, FRUITO reopened, but still confronted historic setbacks of inadequate equipment, untrained staff, unreliable electric power, and an inability to buy and store enough fruit during the dry season. The ensuing financial crisis took on a more personal form when Kigoma lost her husband to malaria several years later.

But things began to change in 2008 when FRUITO entered into a partnership with USADF. It was just the catalyst Kigoma needed to jumpstart her business. FRUITO used the USADF grant (No. 1842) to purchase farming tools for fruit growers to increase their production levels during the growing season. FRUITO also invested in a cold room needed to preserve juice concentrate during the dry season. Now, FRUITO can make sales throughout the year. This was good news for the rural farmers as the new demand for their produce has increased their income levels too.

The USADF grant was also designed to empower the rural farmers by setting up a more cost effective distribution channel for their produce. In the past, the farmers lost profit because they were too dependent on middlemen to transport their crops directly to FRUITO. FRUITO now has their own trucks available to pick up farmers’ fruit directly for a lower cost and in turn pay the farmers a better market value for their produce.

After nearly 30 years, Kigoma proves that profitable businesses can be built at the community level – to benefit both the passion fruit farmer and the nurse with the dream of a successful company.

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