Biasha Hamadi Makungu steps in at low tide, carefully threading her way past vibrant coral colonies and congregations of spiky sea urchins.
Ms. Makungu is searching for seaweed. Over the past 26 years, she has cultivated and hauled countless tons of it to shore from the coast of Fumba, a village in the Tanzanian archipelago of Zanzibar.
“I started harvesting seaweed because of the scarcity of water,” she says.
Why We Wrote This
The scarcity of water is what first led Biasha Hamadi Makungu to harvest seaweed. Twenty-six years later, it’s still how she sustains her children and grandchildren.
Most villagers in Fumba are subsistence farmers, growing cassava, bananas, cabbage, and other produce. But when the tides are right, Ms. Makungu and 14 other women work as part of Pania Uchupe, a seaweed harvesting collective whose name in Swahili roughly translates to “Let’s work hard to succeed.”
Each harvest week lasts four or five days, with the women collecting more than 8,000 kilograms (17,000 pounds) of Eucheuma denticulatum, a strain of red algae. It can be made into a variety of products, from soaps and cosmetics to hot sauce and juice.
The collective has been active for years, selling mostly at local markets or to intermediaries who export to China, the United States, and elsewhere abroad. But in 2021, the women began supplying the SeaWeed Café, a factory in Kerege that’s north of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest port.
“The idea was to invest in seaweed-based foods while empowering local farmers,” says Nancy Iraba, a marine scientist who founded the factory.
Back in Fumba, the women of the collective sit in a circle, picking through baskets of semidried seaweed. They will reserve some of it for their own families, whipping up cakes, soups, and kachumbari (a traditional tomato-based salad).
Ms. Makungu supports her children and grandkids with her harvests; her husband, a former schoolteacher, died a few years ago.
“Our mothers didn’t do this – we are the first generation here,” she says. “And we’ll teach our children to do the same.”
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