WISHH’s training and pilot production opens opportunities for a strategic partner in Ghana to use soy flour to add protein-rich nutrition to a popular cassava-based food, called gari.

WISHH’s latest training in West Africa opens opportunities for a strategic partner in Ghana to use soy flour to add protein-rich nutrition to a popular cassava-based food. In Africa, an estimated 70 million people are dependent on carbohydrate-heavy cassava as a primary source of food, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Americans are more familiar with tapioca, a starch extracted from cassava root that is high in carbohydrates and contains little protein, fiber or nutrients.

To help a WISHH strategic partner use defatted soy flour to add nutrition to a widely consumed cassava-based food called “gari,” WISHH sent an Africa-based food technologist to Yedent Agro Group of Companies, Ltd. in Ghana.

WISHH completed the second phase of a three-part training series at Yedent. The WISHH-contracted food technologist is leading the pilot production of a micronutrient-fortified defatted-soy flour-gari blend, which would significantly improve the nutritive quality of the product.

Phase two of the project provided training on food safety protocols, food fortification and blending, improved gari processing protocols, and the standard operating procedures for production of the micronutrient-fortified defatted-soy-flour-gari blend. The next phase of the project will include the full market production of the product, and monitoring of the production processes for technical and economic improvements. WISHH is using USDA Market Access Program and Foreign Market Development funds to support the gari work in Ghana.

The gari project is WISHH’s latest collaboration with Yedent, which WISHH featured in its first mini documentary released for World Food Day Oct. 16. Available on WISHH’s YouTube channel, 494 people have viewed the video with Yedent CEO Samuel Kwame Ntim-Adu sharing five examples of how WISHH has helped his company which is revising its product development and marketing strategies due to COVID-19 closing schools and other institutional markets. Ntim-Adu also highlighted the opportunities for trade between Ghana and the United States that result from this strategic partnership. WISHH’s work with Yedent has assisted them in expanding into feed production as well.