Gum Arabic is one of those wonder ingredients with a host of different uses.

Collected by ‘tapping’ holes into the trunk of acacia trees that grow wild on Africa’s plains, the harvested gum is a food additive and stabiliser that’s used in sweets, confectionary and soft drinks, and it’s a component that is also used in printing, paint, glue and cosmetics.

In northern Kenya, a private business that was supported with investment from Self Help Africa’s AgriFI Kenya Challenge Fund has taken the business to a new level, by establishing a network of collectors and depots who have been buying gum from close to 6,000 local households, many of whom are from the semi-nomadic herders of the Samburu tribe.

Women who tap gum from local acacia trees sell their harvest to local brokers, who in turn sell to the Nairobi-based Acacia EPZ, who treat and process the gum for sale into European markets.

Acacia gum trader Caroline Lekuiye says that she trained a number of tribeswomen to become gum collectors, and pays them in cash, and sometimes with food when they bring the gum to her. The income she has earned has allowed her to invest in a rainwater harvesting water tank, and build a storeroom at her home, she says.