It's six o'clock in the morning and the sun is still pale as
dozens of delivery vans converge on a building in the outskirts of Nouakchott,
Mauritania's capital. The men busily unloading plastic barrels and carrying them
inside seem as regimented as assembly-line workers, but they are in fact nomadic
herdsmen. They are the most important link in a network that collects camels'
milk gathered at dawn in camps and villages outside Nouakchott and delivers it,
pasteurized, packaged and chilled, to city shops that same morning.
The building in question is a dairy, and it is the first in
Africa to pasteurize and pack camels' milk. In the Islamic Republic of
Mauritania, where the majority of the population are herdsmen rather than
farmers, the dairy is an outward sign of the gradual accommodation of the
traditional and the commercial worlds.
The camel has long been the Swiss Army knife of life in the
desert, providing transport, meat, dung for fuel, urine for medicinal uses, hair
that can be woven into tents and wool to make carpets, as well as milk to drink.
The dairy and its delivery system have now made camels' milk a valuable source
of cash income for nomadic herdsmen, and allow city-dwellers to enjoy a healthy
drink that links them with their past. Camels' milk has many advantages over the
imported ultra-pasteurized "long-life" milk previously drunk in
Mauritania. It is rich in potassium, iron and magnesium, and three-quarters of a
liter—about three glasses—provides the full daily requirement of vitamin C.
It has a low cholesterol level and is acknowledged to be good for diabetics.
Scientists have been surprised by its fatty-acid structure, which includes a
protein identical to insulin—a revelation that may have useful consequences.
The dairy is the brainchild of Nancy Abeiderrahmane. Born in
England, she has lived in Mauritania for over 30 years, and it was her training
as an engineer that alerted her, in the late 1980's, to the commercial potential
of camels' milk. She makes light of the technical side of the project, which she
describes as "a mini-dairy of the sort you'd find anywhere in Europe,"
preferring to emphasize the health, developmental and financial benefits of her
successful enterprise. "All I've done, basically, is to satisfy the town's
demand for regular milk deliveries," she says. But in doing so she has put
Mauritania in touch with a substantial source of income both on the domestic
market and abroad.
When Abeiderrahmane first came to Mauritania, camels' milk was
sold at the roadside from buckets. Given the hot climate, unsold milk spoiled
rapidly, and drinking it raw inevitably left consumers vulnerable to disease.
Yet camels' milk is an important part of the Mauritanian diet; indeed, it is as
much a tradition as a drink. Drought was driving increasing numbers of camel
herdsmen to look for work in the cities, and the urban drift in turn fostered
reliance on imported products, including more than 50,000 tons a year of
sterilized and powdered milk from Europe—a drain on Mauritania's modest
foreign-exchange reserves.
Given the Mauritanians' liking for raw milk, Abeiderrahmane
needed to be sure that there would be a market for the pasteurized product.
Success also depended on whether enough of the city's small corner grocery
stores—the mainstay of any retail endeavor—had electricity and could keep
the pasteurized milk cool. A feasibility study gave positive results on both
counts and, armed with this information, Abeiderrahmane was able to attract
local investors and win a loan from a French development fund, the Caisse
Centrale de Co-operation Economique. The total was enough to purchase the
necessary equipment and begin production, albeit on a shoestring budget.
The early days of the dairy were not without problems.
Initially, herdsmen preferred to sell direct to consumers rather than deal with
an unknown middle-woman. And unused to the notion of a contract to supply a
certain amount of milk every day, they would arrive only when they had excess
production—which was mainly in the cold season, when townspeople customarily
drink less milk. But gradually, with understanding of the nomadic way of life,
Abeiderrahmane won over a group of regular suppliers, enticing them to bring the
milk to the dairy themselves in exchange for a regular supply of camel fodder.
Despite small turnover at first, the new pasteurized milk has
caught on with Mauritanians and the new cartons, branded Tiviski, are now
selling briskly at outlets in three of the country's largest cities. Other
members of Abeiderrahmane's family have joined the enterprise. Her son Yahia,
who is now production manager, explains that "the sales figures have risen
steadily over the last two years. Every shop you go to has cartons of Tiviski,
and we've now even got a rival company producing the same sort of thing—the
ultimate form of flattery. But we're one step ahead. We've diversified into
other camel dairy products, and there are plenty of further possibilities."
Statistics bear out his optimism. Today the dairy, named Laitière
de Mauritania buys in over 2000 liters every day (530 US gallons) to
satisfy demand—10 times the volume it bought daily during 1989. The company
has invested in a fleet of small vans which deliver to the countless corner
shops that proliferate in Nouakchott. Cartons of milk are regularly
air-freighted to the city of Nouadhibou in the north, taken by road to the town
of Rosso in the south and even shipped by boat to neighboring Senegal.
As Yahia Abeiderrahmane says, the dairy has moved on to other
uses of camels' milk. Fermented milk, a great favorite with Mauritanians, has
been added to the repertoire, and a type of light cottage cheese is also
popular. Now the company is hoping to tap the European yearning for novelty with
a unique product—a tasty, low-fat, hard camels'-milk cheese. A French
researcher has provided the necessary scientific know-how to coagulate camels'
milk, and now only European Union regulations prevent the "camelbert"
cheese from being sold in England and Germany.
One problem facing Abeiderrahmane is that the European Union
does not officially recognize the camel as a milk-producing animal, as it does
the cow and the goat. A second difficulty is the lack of a reliable pasteurizing
test for the very specific qualities of camels' milk. But Abeiderrahmane is
convinced that her product is marketable in Europe. "We took a sample to
Harrod's," London's most famous department store, she says, "and the
cheese buyer really loved it. Once we get the bureaucratic and technical
problems out of the way, I believe the product will sell itself."
With this new role as potential foreign-currency earner for
Mauritania, camels' milk is opening up possibilities for a whole swathe of
African countries where camels thrive. Nancy Abeiderrahmane's enterprise is
developing confidence in Africa that local products are as good—if not
better—than anything Europe can provide.
