Due to the Covid-19 breakout in 2020, the prices of food tripled. Added to this a lot of people have lost their means of livelihood. Hence, there are a lot of people who cannot cope with the rise in the prices of food. Garri is a must-have in most houses in Nigeria regardless of the social class.
It used to be N150 per rubber, it increased to N300-350 in some states and N250 in others. We are concerned about this and thought deeply about the importance of local food processing and how this can contribute to food security and availability at affordable prices.
This led us to start a Garri Processing unit which is completely managed by women. Through this, six community women have now secured a job during this crisis. We are now providing Garri at 200 per rubber to people within communities and to the general public. We are looking forward to working with a network of cassava farmers within the communities we serve. We are also looking at having a zero-waste processing unit, where the cassava peels are converted into animal feed and the starch from the cassava processing dried for laundry purposes.
We remain grateful to LB-Foundation for their kind support.
