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

Comoros' economy depends heavily on three cash crops -- vanilla, clove and ylang-ylang -- generating 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.

Create a woman-led, fair-trade vanilla value chain that channels trade premiums into farmer and worker welfare, supported by the EU-Comoros Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA).

Vaniacom 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. Since becoming a HAND IN HAND Fund partner of the German fair-trade retailer Rapunzel in 2018, it has used fair-trade bonuses to fund a mutual health-insurance scheme (launched February 2022), paid maternity leave beyond legal requirements, and a social profit-sharing fund.

The EU-Comoros EPA cut machinery-import tariffs from 45% to 5%. Farmer and supplier counts are inconsistent across sources: 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.

A promising women-led fair-trade model with concrete welfare benefits, but figures are self-reported by the company and its trading partners with no independent third-party evaluation found. The US Department of Labor's 2021 child-labour report notes zero labour inspections were conducted nationally in Comoros 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.