Daniela Rakotomamonjy is the founder and CEO of ACE, a group of companies that focus on agribusiness and renewable energy projects in Madagascar. ACE consists of multi-sectoral companies specialized in public, private partnership projects in renewable energy, urban and rural land reform, agribusiness, and ecotourism. Her passion lies in preserving nature through initiatives such as reforestation, beekeeping, organic farming, and green energy.

She is engaged in various community initiatives that are focused on building communities and supporting young people. Her main focus areas are women empowerment, equal access to education, fighting youth drug abuse and providing professional training opportunities for people in her community. Below she shares more insight about her vision and how she is working towards achieving it.

More than 820 million people are hungry globally. Among them, more than 4 million dead since January this year! Feeding the planet is everyone’s problem, but I decided to make it my advocacy, and this is how I bring my contribution to Madagascar!

Bees pollinate around 75% of all crops in the world. Since 2006, more than 30% of honeybee colonies have disappeared, posing a significant threat to global agriculture. This phenomenon is caused primarily by excessive use of pesticides. This reduction mainly affects the availability of honey, honey by-products, fruits, and vegetables.

As stated by Dr Samuel Myers of Harvard University, the disappearance of honey on the market would lead to dietary changes that could increase the annual global non-communicable diseases and malnutrition mortality rates by an additional 2.7% per year. On a local level, the loss of honeybees not only reduces the availability of essential sources of nutrition but also decreases the availability of related jobs (e.g. beekeepers and gardeners).

My vision is to advocate for food security in the world and to create an environment favourable to the conservation and multiplication of honeybees.

The challenges are not only to promote beekeeping activities but also:

• The restoration of arid lands destroyed by bush fires for many successive years
• The reforestation from honey species
• The creation of jobs and sources of income for the local populations (98 people from the marginalized villages surrounding the project area)
• Awareness of biodiversity conservation (mainly the bees) and soil enrichment (fertilization, fight against bush fires, etc.)
• And finally, the promotion of organic farming and healthy food

My pilot project called Bee Mada counts 33 hectares reforested honeybee garden hosting 100 beehives, more than 25 000 tropical fruit trees and 1 hectare of fish and chicken farm. Apart from organic honey, fruit, and vegetable production, we also produce around 1.100 tons of organic rice per year.

We hand out more than 4% of our products to marginalized people, families, and the kids in the villages surrounding our projects. These include beehives, bee swarms, and different varieties of vegetables and bean seeds to them.

I still have many milestones ahead to achieve my vision, and so every day, I show up and give my best in everything I do. I have learnt over the years not to be afraid of failure because it is part of the journey towards success. All you need to do is trust yourself and keep going eventually; you will succeed. To find our more about our project visit and follow our page on Facebook: Group ACE Madagascar.