(Feature Article)
Sierra Leone is coming of age as cassava which is our second staple food is now used to produce bread. It is harvested cassava which is grinded into flour and is blended with imported wheat flour and baked into bread. This is an initiative by a Sierra Leonean, Dr. Brima James, C.E.O of Home Food and Drinks – Salone who has started this venture.
Having benefited from the World Bank and Sierra Leone funded Skills Development Fund project he has targeted 60 people to be trained. CEO James is partnering with a vocational institution in Bo, St Mary’s Vocational Institute. ” This is done to help deepen the local content policy drive of government as this is going to lessen the burden of wheat flour importation which is very expensive at the moment”, said CEO, Dr. James.
He is getting assistance on how to implement this project with technical support from an expert from the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture in the person of F. Gregory. Mr. Gregory is a Research Associate in the Food and Nutrition unit at the IITA based in Nigeria, and “foods that are gluten free are what the project targets,” according to Gregory.
Agricultural Value Chain Development Program (AVDP) and Sierra Leone Agricultural Research Institute are also helping out with technical and professional inputs. Speaking to one of the trainees for the project, Brima Jimmy a baker who will go to train others, told me that he has done it twice and the bread obtained from the mixture of cassava flour and wheat flour is as normal as the one got from all – wheat flour and people like it.
All that will be needed is encouraging farmers to plant “high quality cassava”. And for the project to be expanded in future there is going to be a need for equipment so that huge quantity of cassava can be grinded in a very short time.
