Zurich/Raphe, November 3, 2026 – Until now, Worku Alemu has earned no more than 25 rappen a day repairing umbrellas. Now the Ethiopian smallholder farmer has a much better source of income: from a single beehive, he harvested about 20 kilograms of honey during his first harvest.
Suddenly, rain begins to patter on the roof: an afternoon downpour. Shortly afterward, water starts dripping from the ceiling. Worku Alemu grabs an umbrella and holds it over his visitor from Switzerland so the ink in his notebook doesn’t smudge.
Worku knows a thing or two about umbrellas. On market days, the 35-year-old sits among the vegetable vendors and waits for customers. His only tool is a simple pair of pliers. His father taught him how to straighten bent ribs and repair broken umbrellas so they’re usable again. Worku earns up to 25 Swiss rappen doing this on a market day.
Worku lives with his wife, Tsehaynesh, and their four children in the Raphe district in southern Ethiopia. The family owns only a quarter hectare of land. Their house is a traditional round hut. There are large holes between the wall’s struts, and the roof is covered with leaves from the ensete shrub.
No lunch
The family eats twice a day. “We don’t have money for coffee beans,” says Worku. In the morning, Tsehaynesh brews a decoction from the husks of the coffee cherries, served with a few field beans. There’s no lunch. In the evening, they usually have cabbage with kocho, a staple food made from the ensete plant. “If I make some money at the market, I sometimes bring home a few tomatoes or potatoes.”
Worku takes advantage of every opportunity that comes his way. He grows enset, cabbage, and beans, makes baskets out of bamboo—and has been keeping bees for quite some time. But traditional beekeeping in Ethiopia is laborious and dangerous. Stings are a daily occurrence, and falls are a constant risk. That’s because the traditional beehives hang high in the trees. They’re built from simple materials like wood, bamboo, twigs, and grass, and are often sealed with clay or cow dung. If Worku wants to check whether the honey is ready to harvest, he has to climb the tree.
The beehive must be opened. The bees have firmly built their combs into the hive; Worku must cut them out. In the process, the bee colonies are usually destroyed. And the yield is low: According to local experts, traditional beehives typically yield only four to six kilograms of honey per year.
The Swiss foundation Menschen für Menschen therefore equipped Worku with five new beehives and trained him in how to use them. From each of his traditional hives, he transferred a bee colony to one of the new hives. They stand on racks on the ground. Inside, wooden slats are placed across the hive. The bees build a honeycomb on each one. Worku can lift them out individually to check on the colony and see if the honey is ready for harvest. During harvest, he carefully removes combs with ripe honey without destroying the brood combs.
Raw Material for Honey Wine
The new hives yield about 15 to 20 kilograms of honey per colony per year – several times more than the traditional baskets. One hive costs the equivalent of 32 Swiss francs. Including training and protective gear, Menschen für Menschen invests about 190 Swiss francs per family.
For Worku, the investment is paying off. Nine months after receiving the hives, he harvested honey from one of them for the first time: four buckets, about 20 kilograms of raw honey. The honey is not extracted by centrifugation; it remains mixed with wax and comb fragments. This does not diminish its value: in Ethiopia, such raw honey is a sought-after ingredient for tej, the traditional honey wine. Worku could currently fetch about 2,500 birr – just under 13 Swiss francs – for one bucket. But he’s waiting. “Everyone has just harvested their honey,” he says. “I want to hold onto it a little longer until I can get 3,000 birr for it.” To earn the equivalent of about 15 Swiss francs for a bucket, Worku would have to repair umbrellas for 60 days. A single beehive yielded him four buckets.
Worku still doesn’t want to harvest the remaining four hives, though. The blooming season for many plants is over. “If I harvest all the honey now, the bees won’t have anything left to eat,” he says. He plans to harvest again only when enough plants are blooming once more and the bees have built up new reserves. Worku also learned this during his training with Menschen für Menschen: how to observe his bee colonies and manage their stores. How much honey can he take from them? When is the right time to harvest?
Tailored Solutions
“Worku Alemu is a good example of how we work,” says Claudio Capaul, co-managing director of Menschen für Menschen. “Our local experts know the families, analyze their situations together with them, and look for solutions that fit their specific circumstances.”
For Worku, beekeeping was a natural choice: he was already keeping bees. Other farming families are learning how to increase their yields on their limited land or are receiving support to start a small business.
About 98,000 people live in the Raphe district. Thirty-six percent of families own less than a quarter hectare of land. Nine out of ten do not have enough to eat throughout the year. Through a three-year project, Menschen für Menschen aims to improve the living conditions of about 3,600 families.
Worku already knows what he wants to use the income from the honey for. The roof of his house needs to be replaced, and later he’d like to buy a sheep or a goat. “But first, my earnings will go toward better nutrition for our children,” he says. When he sells his first batch of honey, there will at least be something the family can’t normally afford: “Then I’ll definitely buy a little meat, too.”
About the Menschen für Menschen Foundation
Menschen für Menschen is committed to fighting poverty and hunger. The foundation was established by actor Karlheinz Böhm (1928–2014). In the spirit of its founder, the Swiss aid organization creates opportunities for the poorest families in Ethiopia. The goal of this work is to enable them to live with dignity in their home country. The individual projects focus on women’s empowerment, vocational training, microloans, child welfare, family planning, and agricultural development. These components are tailored to local needs and implemented in collaboration with carefully selected local partners.
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