You may have guessed it: 2 Mages refers to two of the three wise men, or ‘magi’, that visited baby Jesus according to legend, bringing myrrh and frankincense. The third wise man brought gold. That, dear customer, will be your task!

Mission and scope of activities

2Mages is developing a new market for frankincense and myrrh, where producers get paid a fair price, are acknowledged, and consumers pay a reasonable price for top quality, pure and fully traceable products. Ten percent of our revenue is returned to the Beeyo Maal collective in Somaliland to improve the sustainability and conditions of production, and ten percent is invested in research activities to improve and expand the trade in these resins, including scientific research.

2Mages sells to both individual customers and small businesses. If you have a small business and are interested in obtaining our essential oils or resins, please get in touch with us through email. A B2B portal is under construction.

We are open to collaborations, both for using our website to sell other pure, organic, fully traceable and fair trade-based products collected in the wild, and for individuals who would like to market and sell our products within their own networks. Write us an email if you would like to join our movement.

2Mages is particularly interested in scientific collaborations. Researchers interested in fieldwork in Somaliland, in academic exchange with Somali partners, or in obtaining our resins/essential oils for medical or other research purposes, are encouraged to get in touch with us. We seek to join forces with other people and organizations concerned by the long-term sustainability of frankincense and myrrh production.

Our partner Beeyo Maal

Beeyo Maal was established in 2020 by female sorters in Somaliland, to obtain better prices and conditions for communities harvesting frankincense and myrrh. More than 4000 women and 2800 male harvesters belonging to 490 communities collecting these resins in Somaliland are affiliated to Beeyo Maal. Together they can produce about 300 tons of resins per year.

The driving force behind this cooperative, Amina Souleiman, has campaigned relentlessly to stop the abusive and exploitative practices of a US essential oils giant, who had nearly cornered the entire market in Somaliland. The revolt by unpaid harvesters and abused women sorters, relayed through major international media, has led to a judicial enquiry in the USA, the cessation of that company’s activities in Somaliland, the fleeing of the principal middleman with millions of dollars and a shake-up of the entire sector. At the time of writing, Amina is helping rural Somali women obtain from that US company their unpaid wages and payment for delivered resins.

2Mages is committed to helping the Beeyo Maal cooperative attain maturity and to become a well-functioning organization capable of self-governing the resins production sector in Somaliland. This requires a considerable investment in time and money, but this combination of paying fair prices and collective action by the producers is exactly what may lead to sustainable sectoral development.

If you are interested in wholesale resins and essential oils, we encourage you to buy directly from Beeyo Maal.

Who are we?

2Mages is a company under the sole proprietorship of Robert Kluijver, registered in the Netherlands.

Robert is a Dutch national with three decades of experience in international development and post-conflict research. He started working in Somalia in 2015, lived in Somaliland’s capital Hargeisa for 2 years, learnt some Somali and traveled widely through the region. His mid-career PhD about the State in Somalia allowed him to deepen his knowledge and understanding of Somali society. His personal website robertk.space describes some of his work in contemporary art, cultural heritage and political research.

Robert works closely with a large number of friends, the key ones for this venture being:

  • Amina Souleiman, a Somali businesswoman and activist fighting to improve the conditions of women and rural communities working in the Somali resins trade, founder of Beeyo Maal.
  • Mathieu Beley, a French perfumer, adventurer and business developer based in Mozambique
  • Ton Damen, a Dutch artist, graphic designer, website builder and strategic thinker based in AmsterdamOnly tested on myself and my friends

2Mages is also a family business, thriving thanks to the support of family members and friends, who are also the guinea pigs on whom all our products are tested – cruelty free!

2Mages Harvesters

For thousands of years, communities in the northern Somali region – today, Somaliland and Puntland – have provided the world with the precious gums from the frankincense and myrrh trees. Given that the trees grow only in the wild, often in remote mountainous areas, the labour of collecting these resins is very tough; only men engage in this work. But the women of collecting communities engage in the equally arduous task of sorting, cleaning and packaging the gums.

Frankincense and myrrh forests (usually large groves consisting of several dozen to several hundred trees) have always been exploited by communities, which resemble extended families. Private ownership is very rare, and these forests cannot be bought or sold. This ensures that forest stewardship and collection and processing techniques are passed on from generation to generation. Each tree, and each forest has its own particularities, and the harvesters have intimate knowledge of them.

2Mages works closely with the Beeyo Maal collective to select specific harvesters known for the quality of their resins, paying them a fair price and giving them the recognition they deserve. We expect this will encourage them to specialize in a sustainable and artful exploitation of this unique resource and seek to further improve their product. Instead of buying from the same harvesters, we aim to map the salient points of resin production in Somaliland, and later other regions of the Horn of Africa.

We thus will build a catalogue of resins from different harvesters that perfumers, cosmeticians, aromatherapists, scientists and other aficionados can consult (and smell) to make their choice; we can then ensure a steady supply of the same or similar resins to allow them to develop steady products for their customers.

On each of the following producer pages, you will also find links to the products made with their resins.

The team running 2Mages

2Mages may be a one-person set-up, but it is easier to conceive of this organisation as the result of teamwork between the following characters: