10 African Businesses Making The World’s Most Expensive Products | So Expensive | Business Insider
TLDRThe video explores how artisans across Africa produce luxury goods like purple dye, shea butter, argan oil, and handmade rugs using time-honored techniques passed down over generations. These intricate processes require extensive manual labor, rare ingredients, and specialized skills, which drive up costs. However, middlemen siphon off most profits while artisans struggle financially. Some cooperatives now aim to help artisans sell directly to overseas buyers willing to pay premium prices for authenticity and quality.
Takeaways
- 😲 The video explores how small businesses across Africa make some of the world's most expensive products like Tyrian purple dye, shea butter and argan oil.
- 😎 These products rely on intense manual labor, specialized skills and scarce natural resources, which drives up their cost.
- 🤑 Middlemen and exporters capture most of the profits, while artisans struggle to make a living wage.
- 🌿 Deforestation and climate change threaten the sustainability of harvesting rare natural ingredients like frankincense resin and argan nuts.
- 🐟 Overfishing leads fishers to risk their lives finding rare fish swim bladders that sell for thousands of dollars per kilo in China.
- 👩🌾 Women-run cooperatives in Morocco have brought argan oil production from 200 liters to 4000 metric tons annually in just one generation.
- 😢 River reed salt makers in Kenya struggle to find marshy land for the reeds to grow due to deforestation and changing weather patterns.
- 🙌 Slow Food and other NGOs try to create a market for rare artisanal ingredients to incentivize sustainability and fair wages for producers.
- 💰The labor-intensive process for making handmade Zellige tiles in Morocco accounts for much of their high cost, over $50 per square foot.
- 🧵 Authentic handwoven Moroccan rugs can cost over $2000, but weavers typically receive less than 50% of that final price.
Q & A
What makes Zellige tiles so unique compared to other tiles?
-Zellige tiles are made completely by hand, with each tile chiselled individually. This handmade process results in tiles that are not uniform in color, shape or texture like mass-produced tiles.
Why has demand for East African shea butter grown recently?
-Demand has grown because East African shea butter from the nilotica shea tree has special properties that make it desirable for cosmetics - it has higher oleic acid content, lower stearic acid content, and contains antioxidants.
How did Tyrian purple dye nearly go extinct?
-After the fall of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century, production of Tyrian purple dye came to a halt. The dye was so rare and expensive that only royalty could afford clothes dyed with it.
Why is making authentic Tyrian purple dye so challenging?
-The dye comes from the hypobranchial gland of certain mollusks. Extracting the gland is tedious work and only yields a tiny amount of pigment. The process also requires extensive purification to get a pure color.
How did stockfish from Norway become popular in Nigeria?
-During the Nigerian Civil War famine in the late 1960s, Norway sent emergency stockfish supplies. Nigerians developed a taste for it, and today Norway exports over 99% of its stockfish to Nigeria.
What makes argan oil production unique in Morocco?
-Women-run cooperatives transformed argan oil from a local product to a billion-dollar global industry. This boosted the value of argan trees, helping conserve the ecosystem.
Why is red palm oil more expensive than regular palm oil?
-Red palm oil is made manually in small batches. Limited rainy seasons and climate change decrease palm fruit supply. Palm kernel oil uses heavy machinery to mass-produce, keeping costs lower.
How did fish maw from the Chinese bahaba become so rare?
-The bahaba was overfished to near extinction and is now a protected species in China. This led to imports from other countries to meet demand, but smuggling and overfishing threaten those species too.
What makes handmade Moroccan rugs so expensive?
-Authentic wool rugs are labor-intensive to produce - from washing and dying wool to the months spent intricately knotting threads. Larger, more complex patterned rugs require the most time and work.
Why don't rug makers earn much profit compared to rug prices?
-Most weavers live rurally with limited access to markets. They rely on middlemen who buy rugs cheaply and sell them on for much higher prices. Some companies are trying to pay weavers a fairer percentage.
Outlines
🧶 Making intricate Zellige tiles in Morocco
Zellige tiles are made from clay and water in Fez, Morocco. Skilled artisans mold the clay, chisel intricate designs, and glaze and fire the tiles. The handmade process makes them expensive at $50 per square foot, compared to $0.15 for ceramic tiles. Their imperfection and hand-chiseling makes each tile unique.
🌿 Reviving rare Tyrian purple dye in Tunisia
Tyrian purple dye is made from the hypobranchial gland of murex sea snails in Tunisia. The intricate process was reconstructed from ancient texts and takes 45kg of snails to produce 1 gram of pure dye worth $3000. Its astronomical price comes from the laborious extraction and purification process.
🌳 Preserving frankincense and myrrh trees
Frankincense and myrrh are aromatic resins from Boswellia and Commiphora trees native to the Horn of Africa. Overharvesting for essential oils threatens the trees' survival. Their rarity and regulations to preserve the species contribute to the high price.
🐟 Nigerian stockfish demand drives Norwegian market
Stockfish is expensive dried cod from Norway supplying Nigerian demand. Almost all of Norway's stockfish production worth over $500,000 goes to Nigeria. Prices fluctuate based on season, energy costs in Norway, and Nigerian import regulations and currency rates.
🥜 Empowering Ugandan women to produce shea butter
East African shea butter from shea nuts has a higher melting point than the West African variety. It's prized in cosmetics for quick absorption into skin. Limited supply and low number of producers in Uganda raise the price and effort to meet demand.
🐚 Reviving Tunisia's ancient dye tradition
Authentic Tyrian purple dye from murex sea snails fell out of production in the 15th century. One producer in Tunisia revived the intricate process that takes a month and costs $800 per gram. He balances production with preserving the endangered sea snails.
🌴 Preserving trees aids production of rare Kenyan salt
River reed salt is made solely by the Bukusu community in Kenya. They harvest reeds along the Nzoia River and burn, filter and dry them to produce the umami salt. Climate change threatening trees and reeds makes the 8-day process challenging.
🎣 Chinese demand for rare fish organ threatens species
Fish maw is a swim bladder organ from large fish like cod, valued in Chinese cuisine for perceived health benefits. Overfishing and high demand, especially with China's own stocks depleted, drives high pricing and illegal trade threatening some species.
🥄 Women’s argan cooperatives power Moroccan industry
Argan oil comes from the nuts of argan trees only found in southwest Morocco. Women's cooperatives helped transform niche production into a billion-dollar export industry. Fair-trade programs aim to ensure their economic stability.
🌱 Nigerian red palm oil relies on risky harvests
Red palm oil is extracted from the fruit of oil palms in a weeklong process in Nigeria. Expert climbers scale trees barefoot to collect the fruit. Limited and inconsistent harvests contribute to red palm oil costing 3 times as much as standard palm oil.
🧵 Preserving intricate Moroccan rug-making tradition
Moroccan rugs are woven by hand from wool and natural dyes. They sell for over $2000 abroad, but artisans earn a fraction despite weeks of work. Some cooperatives help them fight middlemen, but passing on the skills proves challenging.
🐟 Fish bladder traffic threatens rare species
Fish maw is a balloon-like fish organ considered a delicacy in Chinese cuisine, increasingly supplied by other countries after China's stocks were depleted. Prices range from $200 to $4000 per pound, driving illegal trade despite conservation efforts.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Zellige tiles
💡East African shea butter
💡Tyrian purple
💡frankincense and myrrh
💡river reed salt
💡fish maw
💡argan oil
💡red palm oil
💡Moroccan rugs
💡direct trade
Highlights
Zellige tiles start out as a simple mixture of clay and water, but after painstaking work, artisans chisel and transform them into complex works of art.
It took Ghassen two years to learn how efficiently extract the gland from the snails when making Tyrian purple dye.
The supply chain struggles to meet the growing demand for East African shea butter due to the limited number of producers.
Almost 100% of the stockfish produced in Norway is exported to Nigeria due to the high demand there.
Argan oil's rise in popularity transformed the production into a billion-dollar industry and helped conserve the argan forest ecosystem.
Frankincense trees produce resin to protect against injury when tapped, making this sap valuable but also threatening the trees' sustainability.
The intricate knots in handmade Moroccan rugs require patience and imagination without guides, making each one unique.
The supply chain struggles to meet the growing demand for East African shea butter due to the limited number of producers.
River reed salt production is limited by climate change and deforestation along the Nzoia River, threatening the Bukusu community's generations-old traditional process.
High demand and overfishing threaten the sustainability of the fish maw supply chain, causing illegal trafficking and risks for Ugandan fishers.
Red palm oil is triple the price of regular palm oil due to small-scale manual production, but climate change and deforestation present challenges in Nigeria.
Moroccan rug weavers use wool from local sheep and natural dyes but struggle to earn fair profits while middlemen take most earnings from the rugs' high resale value.
Passing the rug weaving tradition to younger generations presents a challenge despite cooperatives aiming to help artisans sell directly and preserve the craft.
Fish maw's rarity and supposed health benefits make it highly valued in Chinese cuisine, with most now imported to China from other overfished regions like Uganda.
River reed salt production is limited by climate change and deforestation along the Nzoia River, threatening the Bukusu community's generations-old traditional process.
Transcripts
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