Vaniacom — Women-Led Fair-Trade Organic Vanilla Cooperative Network

Comoros' economy depends heavily on three cash crops — vanilla, clove and ylang-ylang — which together generate roughly 80% of export revenue, produced mostly by smallholders with limited access to finance. Vaniacom, founded by entrepreneur Sitti Chihabiddine, built an organic- and fair-trade-certified vanilla supply chain sourcing from farmers across the archipelago. According to EU trade reporting, the company employs 45 staff (80% women) and works with about 150 producers (80% women), exporting roughly 8 tonnes of organic vanilla a year, 80% of it to the EU — helped by the EU-Comoros Economic Partnership Agreement, which cut machinery-import tariffs from 45% to 5%.
Since becoming a HAND IN HAND Fund partner of the German fair-trade retailer Rapunzel in 2018, Vaniacom has used fair-trade bonuses to fund a mutual health-insurance scheme for workers and their families (launched February 2022), paid maternity leave beyond legal requirements, and a social profit-sharing fund that lets smallholders reinvest in production.
The figures are self-reported by the company and its trading partners, with no independent third-party evaluation found, and farmer counts are inconsistent across sources and years — Rapunzel's own partner page cites an earlier cohort of 220 suppliers (84 in the HAND IN HAND programme) versus the EU's more recent figure of 150. More broadly, the US Department of Labor's 2021 child-labour report rates Comoros 'Moderate Advancement' and notes zero labour inspections were conducted nationally in 2023, with continued child-labour risk documented in vanilla and other export-crop sectors — a sector-wide finding, not one specific to Vaniacom, but relevant context. The operation also remains small-scale relative to global vanilla production.

Read the full analysis: https://www.eeas.europa.eu/delegations/mauritius/trade-success-no16-comoros-epa-stimulating-organic-and-fair-trade-vanilla-exports-eu_en