To help aspiring entrepreneurs in Mali kick-start their food ventures, a five-day Smart Food workshop was recently conducted in the country’s Diola region. Women and men were trained in all aspects of producing value-added foods from sorghum, millet, groundnut and cowpea for improving household nutrition as well as for sale. The workshop was organized under the aegis of EU-APSAN-Mali project.
The workshop began with training in good hygiene practices for households and processing units as well as assessing the quality of raw material used in processing. The second module focused on processing techniques for nutritious food products. The end products of this module were 10 recipes, including complementary flours, enriched porridge, vegetable soup and enriched bread. The third module imparted training in packaging and labeling of products.
Up on return to their villages, the workshop participants are expected to organize similar training sessions for at least 25 members of their communities in each of the 16 villages represented.
Nah Dembele of Wacoro village who is one of the members of a women food processing group, said, “We produce crops, but we did not know much about the potential of our crops, especially in terms of nutrition. With this training, we can benefit more from our production through its processing for family consumption and markets.”
“I now know how to prepare foods like enriched porridge, enriched cowpea soup and many other recipes learned during the training session,’’ says Mrs. Fatoumata Diarra from Siby village in the region.