Yoba make you better – you better make Yoba!

The conference and workshop “workshop on creating access to probiotic technology in Uganda” was held in the conference hall on UIRI campus in Kampala. The conference was a big success and twelve dairy producers immediately took a Yoba starter back home. Presentations were given by UIRI, Life Dairy and Yoba for Life in the morning. [...]

The Yoba drink was handed out to the children of St. Mary’s junior school in Katete during their morning break. A short tour of the premises was arranged and there was also time to speak to several teachers, who were very happy with the Yoba initiative. They mentioned that many children often do not eat [...]

The Life Dairy Factory of Fred Kaggwa in the remote village of Katete was also visited. This is the place where the school feeding programme was set up. At Life Dairy Fred Kaggwa was interviewed to enable precise documentation of the production protocol of the Yoba drink. The protocol was distributed as a flyer during [...]

Mid January Remco and his family left for Uganda. Their luggage contained biological material for the new Yoba formula: freeze-dried bacteria serving as a starter for making the Yoba dairy drink. Upon arrival in Kampala they visited the Uganda International Research Institute (UIRI), the research institute where, among other innovative products, Yoba starters are being [...]

In January 2013 the Yoba mission continues with a novel yoba dairy formula containing Lactobacillus rhamnosus yoba 2012! After isolation of the yoba bacterium from a dairy product, followed by a detailed genetic characterization, we succeeded in the production of billions of yoba bacteria at a producer of starter cultures in the Netherlands. After production, [...]

It’s already one month since I’m back in Switzerland from Uganda – how time flies! Beginning of September my father and I went to Uganda for a two week holiday, in the same time we wanted to visit the small village of Kateete. That is the place where the small yoghurt factory Life Dairy is [...]

After the successful introduction of Yoba by Tiziana, Bernd and Christiaan it is great to see that Fred and his Life Dairy team manage to grow the healthy probiotic Yoba bacteria in the milk of Ugandan cows. In the attached pictures you see how Fred is now weekly making Yoba yoghurt for the Yoba School [...]

This last week I have slowly been getting to wrap up the project. People from UIRI have visited Katete to inspect the plant, Fred has come from Katete to UIRI to get to know the most important people, and the agreements have been made for further collaboration. The foundations have been laid for the School [...]

Six months have gone by since I set foot on Ugandan soil for the first time. It is not easy to put these six months into words; do justice to everything and everyone that has been important to me and the project; and not sound too cheesy or cliché when saying that I will miss [...]

Dear loyal readers, Today we had our first large-scale distribution of Yoba yoghurt! As you may have read in Bernd’s last post, after weeks of struggling in the lab to get our beloved Yoba taste back we were finally able to produce the healthy drink again. This meant quick action had to be taken in [...]