Frenchman Henri de Villeneuve is the founder of Cobasa, a structured pan-African investment company that invests in ecosystems rather than projects. With four decades of working in Africa under his belt, he said that only a handful of the continent’s countries saw the value in hemp.
He made the point that whereas cannabis was a legacy crop in Africa, the same could not be said for hemp. Hemp was a relative newcomer to the African market and had a completely different development dynamic that was yet to be grasped by most African leaders.
Europe has a longer tradition of farming hemp than Africa does, farmers are the key
De Villenueve said there was a longer tradition of hemp farming and cultivation in Europe, and that the success of the industry there lay primarily with empowering farmers.
He said the same could apply to Southern Africa where a new hemp industry required farmers to be the main actors, with seeds, knowledge, regulation and markets a secondary consideration.
“Real business in hemp should start with farmers. The minute you have farmers and a bankable product, you’re set” he said.
De Villeneuve said that, to date, South Africa’s development of an industrial cannabis sector had been disappointing with a lack of investment initiative from both the government and potential industry leaders.
Zimbabwe and Zambia are better placed to scale up hemp production rapidly than South Africa is
He said that looking ahead, both Zambia and Zimbabwe were investing in farmers and farmland and those countries had the natural conditions for a thriving hemp industry in the years to come.
While South Africa had the experts and the markets and was not short of land, it had yet to demonstrate the capability to “bring it together to make it a success”, said de Villeneuve.
“Sadly, after four years in South Africa, nothing serious has been done on the ground,” he said.
He said there appeared to be more serious hemp momentum north of the border with both Zimbabwe and Zambia looking to rapidly scale up their hemp industries by first integrating small-scale farmers into the value chain by ensuring they had offtakes.
Currently, the Zimbabwe’s hemp authority, Zimbabwe Industrial Hemp Trust (ZIHT) is conducting an industrial hemp commercial trial at a farm in Mvurwi, about 100km north of the capital Harare. If successful, the pilot will serve as a model that can be rolled out in the rest of the country.
Zambia has been slow to activate a commercial hemp sector but recently appointed a National Cannabis Control Commission that has pledged to roll out hemp farming extensively, in partnership with tribal chiefs who control substantial tracts of land in the country.
South Africa has promise, but seed security is an issue
Fellow panelist, Green Route Hemp Industries founder Mahlatse Mohlala, was far more upbeat about hemp prospects in South Africa.
Dressed completely in hemp clothing – and with a hemp tote bag for good measure – Mohlala earned a round of applause for being a walking example of a successful hemp textile industry.
Mohlatse said he foresaw a thriving hemp-based textile industry in South Africa, but agreed there had been insufficient investment to date. He said within the hemp sector there were different value chains, such as textiles, food, construction and biofuels and that government had to get back to basics and create demand in these sectors. He said this would assist farmers and investors in aligning their resources to industry targets.
He said that investment in hemp textiles was attractive because South Africa already had a developed textile industry and consumer market. He said hemp seed and biofuels also offered targeted investment opportunities.
The third panelist, Budwise Horticulture founder Tebego Seleme, said that for South Africa to succeed in both the hemp and cannabis industries, stakeholders had to get control over local genetics.
He said that local grower stakeholders failed to patent hemp seeds when they had the opportunity in the 1990s and 2000s, an oversight they lived to regret as those seeds had later emerged as hybridised varieties, which South Africans were now importing from Europe.
All industries start with the planting of a seed, said Seleme, who said that for South Africa to develop a thriving hemp industry it had to have home-grown genetics.
“Local seeds for local conditions,” he said.
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