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Things that jump out

Firstly, barriers to progress in the commercialisation of bee keeping are well known, broad, and seemingly institutionalised.

The delegates at the symposium were able to recite the issues with commonality. These are struggles with financing businesses and the challenges of obtaining enough honey of the right quality and with supply reliability. This reflects the under-development of all aspects of the value chain.

Secondly, one common topic was the cultural view of bees in East Africa which – as it was explained to me – is often founded on suspicion and inter-generational negativity about the presence of bees near homes and what they mean as a curse that someone places on another. This is partly practical as the stings of 12 African honey bees has the same venom as some cobra bites.

The dominance of NGOs and charities. This is a complex topic and not one that I know enough about at present. However, I’m firmly in the commercial camp so naturally distance myself from influences that build-in a perpetual reliance on precarious inputs. On the positive side of the NGO coin, there is a lot of science going on to understand biological and ecological issues. This is funded by external money including the EU. See the banner below.

Where are the commercial sponsors?

This is a well-attended and expanding event with people coming from all over Africa and the rest of the World – testament to the attraction of the sector and its potential.

People here enjoy themselves

An energiser session is shown below with the whole audience doing boxing training.

It was well worth coming to Uganda. I’ve made some great contacts, heard a lot of interesting opinions, changed and / or adapted my view of my research topic, and I think I’ve moved the topic forward a bit for those who took part in the intervention.

The door is opened for another leg in this intervention or another one entirely.  

The original plan was to conclude a project within MAAI and then deploy the result, assuming they were useful, via the network built in 2026. This is because someone like me, living and working in the UK could add little practical value on the ground versus the same resource being provided locally.

In short, it would have been fun, but selfish.

As the project has developed, the value I could add has also changed which results in a question about timescales and what that might mean personally as shown below.

It’s something like a nine year project with the first off-ramp five years away.

Needs thinking over.    

The intervention format is planned as follows:

• Presentation to the symposium on the challenges in the abstract.
• Select one specific problem / challenge from the four outlined.
• Problem 1. The value chain of apiculture is not well described or contextualised therefore not commercially explainable to investors.
• Invite attendees to comment on hot stops and cold spots in the value chain directly into the A1 format previously created.

The intervention takes place within the A1 value chain and in how its presented and described.

Aims of the intervention are to refine the value chain and ideally generate new knowledge on how to present it to secondary stakeholders.

Some co-creation may happen so will need to be careful with the IP.

This could of course all change on contact with the stakeholders.

Whilst thinking about cultural relativism and its impact on my project, Radio 4’s “The World Tonight” (BBC 5/8/2026) carried an interview with the president of the Football Association of Malawi, Fleetwood Haiya.

The interview was about the shenanigans at FIFA and the collapse of all sense of proper governance and institutional morals – as I would see it.

Fleetwood Haiya had a more nuanced view and was more pragmatic about the events. The perspective seemed culturally based and was both valid and appropriate, not that I agreed with it.

Cultural relativism morphs into moral relativism which morphs into the luxury of piety.   

Malawi FA facility paid for by FIFA

Reading and researching in general in preparation for the symposium in three months. I’ve just finished Joe Studwell’s “How Africa Works: Success and Failure on the World’s Last Developmental Frontier”, Studwell” (2026).

Very well written with real balance. Straightforward approach and comprehensive.

Malawi is mentioned in relation to its pre and post-independence development.  

A particularly useful part of the book relates to the comparative examples of outcomes for four countries which took different approaches to development.

The positive key message of the book is that it’s all to play for.

The continent is moving and that the work already done, plus the demographics, will add to the positivity despite the risks and challenges.     

References.

Studwell, J, (2026) “How Africa Works: Success and Failure on the World’s Last Developmental Frontier”, Profile Books, London

Co-creation as an option for an intervention at a development symposium

Co-creation is regarded as a process Michalik (2023) and therefore is at least semi-structured.  Michalik also states that the participants need to understand the process implying there are multiple stages to the process – including participant recruitment, process explanation, topic explanation, and co-creation task explanation, task limitations. Mbah and Ezegwu (2025) note broad variance in the understanding of what co-creation is which reinforces the need to brief and train participants on what to expect and indeed what to exclude from a particular co-creation process.

Coggan, et al. (2021) suggest that good knowledge co-creation includes a diverse stakeholder group, a shared goal, but an appreciation for diverse views leading to discourse. In addition, they suggest co-creation should happen in a well-resourced manner meaning environment, time, and materials. Aligned with Michalik, Coggan, et al. (2021) also state the importance of explicit rules and with a stage of participant reflection and critique.

Coggan, et al. (2021) note that the view that co-creation is a positive and applicable model in development environments, there is limited literature to support this, particularly in environmental policy design and review.  This may indicate the risk of well-intentioned stakeholders focusing on process and not practical output or being too similar given their recruitment to a co-creation event.  

Liu, et al. (2022) noted that in policy development, the presence of moderator,  such as food safety in their research, rooted the co-creation process and led to practical outputs.

Mgoduka, et al, (2025) noted that co-creation as a development model is aided by third-party inputs which act as a moderator and anchor to practicality.

In conclusion, whilst co-creation is well supported as a model in general, it seems too risky for a symposium where there may be completing things for potential participants to do. In addition, there may be a limited diversity of opinions and therefore restricted discourse.     

References

Coggan, A. et al. (2021) “Co-creating knowledge in environmental policy development. An analysis of knowledge co-creation in the review of the significant residual impact guidelines for environmental offsets in Queensland, Australia,” Environmental challenges (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 4. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envc.2021.100138.

Liu, J., Yang, W. and Cong, L. (2022) “The role of value co-creation in linking green purchase behavior and corporate social responsibility – An empirical analysis of the agri-food sector in China,” Journal of cleaner production, 360. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.132195.

Mbah, M.F. and Ezegwu, C. (2025) “Impactful Methodological Considerations for Knowledge Co-Creation in Sustainable Development Research,” Sustainability, 17(1), p. 52. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/su17010052.

Mgoduka, S., Kaseeram, I. and Heeralal, S. (2025) “Assessing the Extent to which Customer Feedback Contributes to Value Co-Creation: A Focus on the Tourism Industry,” Journal of sustainable development law and policy, 16(1), pp. 187–208. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4314/jsdlp.v16i1.10.

Michalik, G, (2023) “Co-Creation Mindset, Eight Steps towards the Future of Work”, Springer, Switzerlandlklklkjlk

“Beekeeping Commercialisation – The Process Flow Harnessing Carbon Credits Finance”

Key words

Value chain, business model, quality, capital, commercial, investment.

Background / purpose

Developing apiculture businesses and wider forest-based economies needs capital. The greater the scale and impact being sort, the more capital is needed.

Organic investment capital generation by subsistence farmers is not a viable as it is precarious and low level.

Debt is expensive as it carries high-cost interest and sector risk premiums.

Problem description

Problem 1. The value chain of apiculture is not well described or contextualised therefore not commercially explainable to investors.

Problem 2. Low investment capital suppresses the sector’s development meaning it is off mainstream investment landscapes.

Problem 3. Many stakeholders remain at the subsistence level, despite being skilled, as they cannot access and then leverage capital. This supresses their security, ability to improve processes, and quality.

Problem 4. Inter-relationships between apiculture and wider forest-based economies are not well commercially described so current values are depressed and potential values opaque.

Methodology

Through workshops, site visits, interviews, and desk research, an integrated process and value flow design was developed with three components.

Apiculture Value Chain.

A developed, expanded diagram using the well-established Porter’s Value Chain to describe the primary and support functions covering; actions and how they are linked, where capital is deployed, and how value is created and consumed in a commercial apiculture business model.

Business Model Robustness checklist.

A simple checklist covering five areas that question business model dependencies and complexities that create and / or disperse viability, sustainability, and scalability risks.  

Process and Quality Philosophy.

An adapted version of the high-level Toyota Way model to champion “people” and “continuous improvement”. A “well begun is half done” mindset.

Results and conclusions

All three components are developed and critiqued but not deployed on a live case.

All three could be trained from at this stage and applied to existing apiculture value chains.

Action research opportunities are sought.

Practical implications

• Better apiculture business model design and outcomes.
• Reduced risk for participants.
• Increased investor interest means better, lower cost capital including micro-capital.
• Wider scale investment opportunities including carbon credits to increase the value of forest-based economies.  

Working with the MAAI Programme Team, we have reached a good point where in the original proposal can go ahead with the intervention being held at a symposium in late August. This builds on the work done in the second week in Malawi.

Balance

This reflects the genuine difficulty in getting valid and sustainable ethics approval for the direct intervention with subsistence farmers with the point of the original project and it’s potential impact.

WIP

Next task is to design an intervention.

Co-creation is being looked at as a way forward but this creates challenges of intellectual property and data protection.

Ethics

The Ethics committee have raised concerns about aspects of my current project.

Their reaction is both understandable and frustrating.

The project, and its operating environment, are likely outside the scope of what they normally deal with. Understandable.

There are many moving parts that I can see but are hard to explain in an Ethics form. There is also the complication of the trip to Malawi being funded by me working for the first week by an entity who then provided an opportunity to gain some expert opinions and extend the projects network. Understandable.

The frustrating part is that the Ethics committee have pre-empted the second stage of the project which was not covered by the Ethics application that was submitted. This means they are throwing up challenges that had not been put to them and may never have been put to them.

As clearly stated, the design and development of a later, viable and ethical intervention with primary stakeholders was the point of being here this second week Malawi.

As things do in these operating environments, the project has evolved quickly this week with a number of discussions with experts and practitioners at a very useful level.

My conclusion is there is no way to obtain Ethics approval – and stay within it

Given the speed of development and the types of interactions that are happening, and interventions being discussed this is restrictive and negative.  

Staying within it is the key point. I could do the forms, do a trite and compliant positionality statement, and get the box ticked knowing that I would not be able to contain the project to what was agreed.   

Not worth it in a limited form

The project could have used a symposium in August to do interventions at but would have resulted in shrunken outputs with self-limiting impacts when it could do so much more.

Conclusion – action research project stopped

Start again on Monday

Good (so far)

Delivered a course for a major employer which went well and has paid for the second part of this trip which is the workshop design sessions.

Visited a business that has been featured on CNN Inside Africa (30 minutes feature) as a great example of an integrated value chain business in Malawi. It includes a network of small scale and subsistence farmers, process, marketing, and distribution of a nationally recognised brand. Interesting experience.

Been very well hosted and looked after as I have experienced before in Malawi.

My key stakeholder for next week has organised a meeting with the Malawi Bee Keeping Association which has commercial members. Looking forward to that as it extends the expert engagement and my network.

Bad

Impact of inflation and external balance of payments problems are evident.

Ethics approval and risk assessment were submitted some time ago and have not yet been approved or not, so the engagement will go head as planned at is too late to do anything about it either way. I will do Ethics again when I get to the interventions in Q4 but not bother with the risk assessment.