Making Sausages, the Lusaka Way - by John

This week I was working with the Chiningi Women Development Enterprise (CWDE), which is working with disadvantages women, mostly widows affected by HIV/AIDS, to help them develop small businesses. These ladies generally have no real income, and scrape by, often not having enough food for more than one meal a day. CWDE is hoping to help them develop small businesses that will allow them to get some extra income and reduce their day-to-day struggles.

The first project CWDE has been developing is a small sausage making and selling business. Sausages are quite popular in Lusaka, and in the compounds they are sold in small packages for about $1.25 each (which is generally all you can afford to spend, it might be half a days income). Around CWDE there is plenty of demand for sausages, but generally the complaints are that the local sausage is more filler than meat, textured soy protein being a favorite meat substitute. The ladies thought that by making and selling their own sausages, they could control the quality and command a reasonable price. A group of Japanese ladies generously donated a freezer and some startup capital, and I have been working on the costing model, just to make sure we actually do make some money making sausages. Last Thursday was the big day when all our theories were going to be put to the test.

The first thing we did was to buy our meat. We went to Zambeef, the biggest meat producer in Zambia, and bought ground beef wholesale.

Mmmm, Zambeef

The alternatives, at a place called City Market, were more expensive and a whole lot less sanitary. We bought 40Kg and put it in this nice sanitary plastic bucket, which I insisted on (I’m a bit of a fussy westerner that way).

We've got 40Kg of ground beef, let's go make sausages!

When we got back to CWDE headquarters and sausage making room, we found out that mixing spices and other ingredients into 40Kg of beef is no small task. Good thing we had a couple of good strong young men to do the mixing.

Mixing up the Sausage mixture is hard work, especially if you don't have big enough containers.

After mixing for a while, we were ready to use the locally made sausage filler. Just put 10kg of sausage meat in one end, turn the crank, and sausage comes out the other end!

Filling up the Sausage machine

The first product!

… well, it didn’t quite work, the meat kept coming out of the wrong end. No worries, Zambian ingenuity at its finest fixed that problem with a couple of plastic bags to improve the seal.

Houston, we have a problem!

Trying again, turning the handle and …. The sausage started coming out! Except, the crank was harder and harder to turn, and eventually part of the machine got bent and it didn’t work any more. What to do, we had only used up about 5% of the total meat?!

Luckily, our sausage consultant had an old friend in the sausage business. We loaded up all the meat into the truck and drove down to the local sausage factory.

Now THAT'S a sausage machine, thank goodness for friends in the business

It was a little…primitive, but they had a sausage stuffing machine that worked, and in a little more than two hours we were back at headquarters with the sausages all stuff and ready for packaging.

Our happy sausage consultant and the finished product

An efficient production line was formed and 45 minutes later we had all the finished product in the freezer.

Ready for our costumer, $1.25 per package

The final verdict? After all the production costs, CWDE should be able to produce and sell sausages and make a bit of money. We will have to figure out how to fix the stuffer, or find money for a better one. It will be interesting to see how we figure out the next production issues, but I foresee that this could be a reasonably viable business, particularly since the product is good, and a bit cheaper than in the grocery store.