Kisaakye checks on the solids formed after fermenting sour milk, which are being heated in an oven for further processing. — dpa
In a backyard behind a small office building in the outskirts of Kampala, Uganda, Jovia Kisaakye is checking buckets of fermenting milk.
Kisaakye, 20, is an entrepreneur and feels content as she lifts a lid and breathes in the pungent, sour aroma.
The milk is forming small bubbles with tiny larvae curling on the surface – exactly what she wanted to see.
The young woman has developed a mosquito cream based on sour milk that will address two problems faced by people in her country.
The main one is that mosquitoes transmit malaria, with the second one being that the country also struggles with large quantities of spoiled milk due to the lack of refrigeration.
Farmers in Uganda produce 2.8 billion litres of milk every year according to the country's National Dairy Development Authority (DDA), but only a third is consumed.
The rest often goes bad quickly, as most rural areas don’t have any electricity and cannot keep the milk cool.
Meanwhile, malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
In 2020, there were 241 million cases of malaria worldwide and 627,000 deaths, the WHO estimates.
Africa struggles with a disproportionately high share of the burden, with 95% of malaria cases in 2020 and 96% of the deaths.
Children under the age of five accounted for about 80% of all malaria deaths in the Africa region.
In Uganda, malaria is the most common cause of death.
Every year, 14 million people contract the disease, of a population of 46 million, with tens of thousands hospitalised for treatment.
Kisaakye is all too familiar with the problem.
Her brother Jeremiah died of malaria at the age of one in 2007.
She has often had malaria herself and has been treated in the hospital several times.
A statistics student, she started to address the disease three years ago, when she met malaria researcher Patrick Sseremba, 26, and
agronomist and food chemist Blasio Kawere, 26, at Makerere University in Kampala.
Together, they founded Sparkle Agro Brand, after Kisaakye decided to try and create an effective mosquito repellent lotion out of dry
powder from sour milk.
“I simply had to find a solution,” says Kisaakye, who comes from a farming family.
They carried out laboratory tests for weeks, with support from the Uganda's Health Ministry and National Insect Research Institute.
They then tried out the product to see if it worked.
”Many of our first trials were unsuccessful,” says Sseremba.
The trio didn’t give up, however.
They found the right combination early in 2020, creating a mosquito repellent that was active for up to 12 hours.
The product was ready for the market and was much more than a simple mosquito cream, as the natural plant extracts also help to heal the skin and make it supple, says Kisaakye, noting the ingredients are 100% organic.
The Sparkle brand is also committed to the fight against food waste, says the young researcher.
The company buys the sour milk from small dairies, creating a win-win situation, as that gives Sparkle Agro Brand the cream’s main ingredient at a low price that then gets passed on to consumers.
Meanwhile, smallholder farmers use that income to offset their losses.
Sparkle Agro Brand has a modest laboratory in the village of Kitende, south of the Ugandan capital.
The production facility, kitted out with white tiles, smells of flowers.
The company is now worth around half a million dollars, its founders say, and employs four permanent members of staff, while 20 work part-time.
In the lab, there are shelves of hundreds of plastic bottles with pink screw caps and the curved Sparkle logo neatly lined up waiting
for the next order.
Buyers of the product include drug stores and supermarkets in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Aid organisations also buy the creams to distribute to refugees, Kisaakye says.
While they are conquering new markets for mosquito protection, the entrepreneurs are already working on a new idea: an insecticide made from sour milk. – By Henry Wasswa and Kristin Palitza/dpa
