2Mages seeks no certification for our products. It is costly and it adds no guarantee to end users about the origin, sustainable harvesting, organic purity, fair trade etc. of the resins, our raw material.
2Mages is actually one person: me, Robert Kluijver, solo entrepreneur. I buy the resins directly from individual harvesters through their cooperative; each yield is packed in bags of 25 kg which I each inspect upon their arrival in Europe. I give feedback to the harvesters and the ladies who have cleaned and packed the resins. Then I bring them to the distiller, discuss with him how to make the best use of them; later, with friendly professionals the distillation results are analysed and products prepared, which I bottle/package myself.
What could certification add to this process to reassure consumers ? I discussed the problems of certification in my previous post. It is complicating rather than assisting the emergence of sustainable, fair trade, directly from producer to consumer.
One of our harvesters, Abdillah Said Awad, clearly wishes for that, in this clip extracted from a Vice documentary about abuses in the sector in Somaliland.
Nohémie Mawaka, a superfoods entrepreneur from Kinshasa explains the problem with EU organic certification succinctly and eloquently. How are African suppliers supposed to pay (upfront) the certification? In her example, the large German buyer who insists on expensive EU organic certification also insists on paying producers under the market price.
The purpose of certification is to provide guarantees to the consumers or end users that what they buy is actually good for this planet and their health. In this digital age there are much more efficient ways to that than through the bureaucracy of certification:
2Mages clients can be put in touch with the communities who produce the resins. Using translation services on a messaging app or otherwise (they only speak Somali), without further intromission by 2Mages. Hopefully we will gradually build up direct communication channels. Somaliland is even safe to travel, and you can visit the producing areas yourself. Upon request I can provide introductions and telephone numbers.
We are interested in real transparency, not the semblance of it.
