“My name is Aidah Nazziwa, a member of Kwewayo Women’s Development Group that was formed in 2015. Our main enterprise is pineapple and hibiscus wine making. NAWOU started to support our wine making business in 2018. They particularly supported us to improve production and packaging of the wine. Learning visits to Uganda Industrial Research Institute (UIRI) to see the processes that they go through to produce good quality wine also helped our production process. Since then, we have improved our product and our sales have gone up. NAWOU connected us to UNBS and we were taken through the steps of getting the UNBS Quality (Q) mark. We are in the process of getting it and hopeful that by the end of 2022, we will have it.
When they visited our premises, UNBS asked us to improve the hygiene of the place where the wine is produced. On hearing this, NAWOU provided us with a cooking stove for preparation of the wine, large saucepans with lids, a weighing scale for consistency of wine ingredients and a stainless steel working table. We were also supported to become a company limited by guarantee to enable us to operate in a better way. Prior to the training and learning visits, we used to make 5 drums of wine per year, but these have been increased to 20 and as our sales have improved, so have our individual lives. A drum consists of ten 20-litre jerrycans of wine. In a year we sell ten drums of wine and we are hopeful that the sales will increase once we get the Q mark.
Our future plan is to get our own premises to avoid rent and in the long run build a factory. The group has a bank savings account where we bank the money from the sales. In addition to the wine, group members are involved in farming. Some members individually grow pineapples and supply them to the group for wine production, in addition to what is bought from other farmers. In regard to our households, at first, it was difficult for us to meet because our husbands were against the whole idea but once we started to contribute to household needs, there was an attitude change. We remain grateful to NAWOU for all the support.
