For reduced market barriers, diversified enterprise and livelihood opportunities, and increased availability of diverse nutrient-rich foods
How are bean flours empowering women in the African region?
When the country plunged into a crisis due to political unrest that rocked Burundi, food shortages and population displacement was widespread. Hence, out of sheer need for good quality, nutritious porridge flour for her baby’s weaning, Christella Ndayishimye started mixing her own bean-based composite flour. This sowed the seeds for Totahara in her mind and she started a small enterprise in 2009. Equipped with her own recipe of bean-based composite flour following a training facilitated by the Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA), Christella started Totahara with nine employees as a small enterprise from her backyard producing up to 1 ton of flour per month.
Facilitated by the Alliance of Bioversity International and International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), PABRA collaborated with the Institut des Sciences Agronomiques du Burundi (ISABU) in 2015 and engaged Christella Ndayishimye to scale up production of composite bean flour for weaning infants and lactating mothers. This helped Christella to upgrade the flour processing facilities, link to markets and technical capacity that saw her production increase exponentially.