Vice President Jessica Alupo has met with the team from the Presidential Initiative on Banana Industrial Development (PIBID), led by the Director General, Prof Florence Muranga.

The team briefed the Vice President on the various steps they have undertaken in a bid to grow the Capacity of the industry as well as increase productivity of the factory. The Presidential Initiative started in 2005 as a pioneer concept idea designed to start full scale industrialization of Uganda’s bananas.

This initiative has seen the crop, grown in different parts of Uganda on high and low scale become a raw product for different products including the tooke flour, tooke biscuits, tooke porridge, tooke soup, with other products as gluten-free pasta, noodles and chips. “Anything you do with wheat, you do with banana flour, and thankfully, most of our products have been certified,”said Prof. Muranga” The PIBID has grown the investment portfolio to a demonstration plant, water and irrigation works that will serve neighbouring communities on top of their regular-value addition and todate, a community processing drier and other enhanced processing technologies.

 The Vice President applauded the team for their efforts and dedications, saying that “when we solve our problems, we increase the sustainability of our country to address other critical challenges”.

Dr. Muranga gave a brief of the progress so far, highlighting to the Vice President, that the waste from the bananas has led to the generation of 250KWS of energy from biogas and organic fertilizers. There are other additional nonfood spin off like banana wool, banana fibre hair wigs, cotton fabric among others.

This initiative is fully funded by the Government of Uganda.