ZANZIBAR, Tanzania. Women wander along the beaches with baskets, their colorful dresses attracting the attention of tourist cameras. The sunscreen used by holidaymakers may even contain a product harvested by women: Zanzibar seaweed.
Seaweed farming is a sustainable, local industry that employs thousands of women. Seaweed farming looks like a postcard, even if the reality of the job is murkier than meets the eye.
“I experience pain in my back, lower back and chest due to giving birth at sea. There is also the risk of being stung or bitten,” said one farmer, Mwanaisha Makame Simai. “Sometimes strong waves carry you away. I have personally witnessed three drownings.”
Seaweed has been grown off Zanzibar, part of Tanzania's Indian Ocean coast, for decades, but is now seeing a new boom as global demand grows.
Seaweeds are mainly exported to the global food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries, where they are extracted as thickeners and stabilizing agents.
Private investment and donor funds are growing in Zanzibar. Seaweed is the third largest contributor to the local economy after tourism and spices.
“Ten years ago people thought you were crazy working with seaweed,” said Clara Sade, director of Mwani Zanzibar, which describes itself as a small seaweed farm and factory in the village of Paje. “It’s become a buzzword now.”
Mwani even conducts seaweed tours in Paje to introduce the work.
For the semi-autonomous archipelago's government, seaweed is at the heart of a “blue economy” initiative aimed at driving growth through sustainable marine and coastal resources.
Cargill, one of the world's largest commodity trading firms, invested an unspecified amount in Zanzibar seaweed in 2020 in partnership with The Nature Conservancy, with the goal of increasing farmers' yields and incomes.
Other NGOs have increased funding, including the Global Seaweed Coalition, which monitors the safety and sustainability of the sector as it expands.
The majority of Zanzibar's 25,000 seaweed farmers are women, according to the government's 2021 census, remarkable in a society where less than half of women work.
The Associated Press spoke with five women who described sometimes harsh conditions in manual labor. The vast majority of seaweed farmers work independently or in teams, selling to local intermediaries. There is little, if any, protection.
Long days are spent wading under the equatorial sun. This can lead to back pain and skin irritation, and bites from sea urchins or other creatures may be another concern.
“There are health and safety issues with this job,” said Simai, an independent farmer who says she earns about $50 a month to help support her small family of two. The job can be more challenging for those with large families, she said.
“It's not an easy job, it's tiring,” said Pili Khalid Pandu, 43, who works for Mwani, alternating between the factory and a garbage collector at sea.
In recent years, a new risk has emerged from rising sea temperatures.
“Climate change is forcing women to dive into deeper waters” for optimal waste collection, said Mhando Vaziri, project manager for blue economy initiatives at the nonprofit Milele Zanzibar Foundation.
Milele's programs include training women seaweed farmers to swim to combat what Waziri described as a growing drowning crisis.
The hope for the sector, like many natural resource industries in Africa, is to make the supply chain more local. This is the goal of Mwani Zanzibar, where Sade has focused on training seaweed farmers to produce cosmetics.
Mwani's workers spend more time in Paje's workshop rather than at sea. Sade said Mwani's high-quality cosmetics – a bottle of the “superfood for face and body” sells online for $140 – means her workers earn far more than the average seaweed farmer. She did not give details.
“Empowerment gives them the means and opportunity to continue moving forward,” Schade said.
Fauzia Abdallah Khamis, 45, said she had worked her way up from farm worker to factory manager in more than ten years.
Milele also has programs to help women develop seaweed products, mainly cosmetics. Vaziri estimates that locally they can bring in 10 times more money than the raw, unprocessed product.
“A lot of partners want to get more into seaweed,” Vaziri said. “But people raise the question: 'If the program comes here, how will it benefit farmers?'
Simai expressed concern that farmers like her are too far down the value chain to benefit from new investment in local industry.
“Most of the money ends up going to the office workers, not the hard-working farmers,” she said.
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