When he arrived in Uganda in November 2005, Melburnian Simon Turner had only £300 in his pocket and a lead about investing in the export of honey.

Scroll forward five years and these days the 36-year-old is the managing director of a small Kampala-based business, Malaika Honey, which sells locally produced honey into the Ugandan market and exports an associated by-product, propolis, to Australia where it's sold in health food shops as a multi-purpose curative.

Mr Turner, a graphic designer who has worked in advertising and web design in Australia, the UK and Germany, and his business partner and brother-in-law Glenn Harris, a London-based criminal law barrister, first heard of an investment opportunity in Uganda's honey market around 2005.

“They said that the quality of the honey in Uganda was one of the best in the world and hadn't really been tapped by the rest of the world…” recalled Mr Harris, 39. “Because the bees feed on the acacia trees, it has a distinct sort of flavour.”

He said that at the time, the market was looking for suppliers after impurities were found in honey produced in China, then the world's major player.