Multiple brewers Products: Banana juice (Mulamba), Banana beer (Rubisi), Distillate (Gongo) Cultivars used: EAHB (brewing types), Pisang Awak, Gros Michel, Mtwishe, Apple bananas Location: Tanzania, produced everywhere bananas growing, Rubisi in Ibwera village Type of business: Small enterprises, households Clients: Local banana farmers   Principal strengths and weaknesses and Contribution of the business to rural development

  How was the business started ?

The idea of Rubisi making in Tanzania has records of 300 years ago.
It started with making of banana juice (Mulamba). Mulamba was becoming sour after two days and had no alcohol content. By that time farmers were drinking beer made from sorghum only and it was somehow bitter. After finding Mulamba been sweet without alcohol while sorghum was bitter with alcohol, farmers tried to make a balance by sweetening sorghum beer with Mulamba.
In the Ibwera village, the Rubisi is produced by majority of farmers. It was estimated that out of 745 household in the village, 50% - 60% make Rubisi.

  Steps in product preparation - Fresh banana juice (Mulamba) and Banana beer (Rubisi):

Products storage:
Most of Musa products are sold immediately after been produced.
Mulamba can stay for the maximum of 24 hours if boiled. Rubisi can stay for 4 days.

The materials:
For making Mulamba include the canoe made from big trees of more than 1 meter diameter.the canoes can be made by individual farmers and when purchased its cost between 25,000 TzShs to 30,000 TzShs.
The banana sheath rope supports the person squeezing, a funnel made of gourd with grass as sieve, and squeezing ladder. The plastic buckets of 20 lt used for measuring the amount of Mulamba.
Mulamba is produced in two qualities:
- the sweetest extracted from ripe bananas before is mixed with water.
- the sweetest mixed with water at a ratio of 1:2 i.e. 20 litres of sweet Mulamba mixed with 40 litres of water to make 60 litres of Mulamba.

For Rubisi, these includes local materials such as bamboo, pots, bananas, sorghum, grass etc and imported ones like drums, cooking pans, plastic containers, sugar yeast etc. Since the providers of imported materials does not necessarily focus Musa processing, the supply is not always assured.

  The preparation of Gongo:

		Some times they use plastic containers to collect the distillate

 Input access and marketing

Most of processed Musa products are sold locally. Prices are market dependent.

For Banana juice (Mulamba):
75- 90% for home consumption and 2-8% for sale locally. The primary sites of sale are roadsides, bus stops and local markets. The price of bananas depends on the type of bananas, i.e. cooking bananas fetches high price compared to beer bananas. There is no defined marketing system for Mulamba and wasting of produce is common. Mulamba has good market during dry season due its cheap price compared to soda.

Banana beer (Rubisi):
15 – 30% of production are sold locally, in rural areas of banana production. The primary sites of sale are roadsides, local markets, village and urban beer clubs. The principal buyers are low income people. Apart from those exposed at the local market or roadsides, business persons usually investigate and find out who has made Rubisi and usually selling in done at the farm gate. The chief competitors are industrial beers and soft drinks.
Rubisi is a traditional drink used in all local functions such as payment of dowry, wedding ceremonies and funeral ceremonies.

Other use: compost
Banana peels collected, heaped for composting spread into the banana plantations.
This compost sorted, collected into bags, burnt, mixed with water to make solution for sniffing tobacco.
Residues and grass for feed livestock.