Banana Flour Identified As Promising Commodity in Senegal
With Senegal’s food processing and exports a top money maker for the country, ActionAid has been working with communities to identify new crops and products that will enable the poor to obtain food security while also turning their crops into profitable goods.
Senegal Support
Food Security for Senegal
Join ActionAid's efforts to ensure Senegal's poor have access to clean water and food.
Donate Now
Currently, peanuts are a top cash crop for the nation but the abundance of bananas has led locals and ActionAid to begin exploring "banana flour" production. Once dried, bananas can be ground into flour and used as a nutritious substitute for wheat flour.
“All we need is a simple technology... and an appropriate building to meet sanitary requirements” to sell the product, explained ActionAid Senegal's Country Director Moussa Faye.
ActionAid is in the early stages of working with locals in rural areas to produce the banana flour, as well as other banana products such as baby food. In addition to setting up the foundation to produce the flour, ActionAid will conduct a larger distribution market study to determine the need for the product, as well as setting up a network for based on the study’s findings.
A boy poses in front of a banana farm in Senegal.
“Food processing, for us, is a promising area,” Moussa said. He noted that a primary challenge revolves around the country’s food subsidy policies.
“If you still have subsidized food imported from everywhere, that competes with locals and everything might fail because policies don’t support these local foods,” Moussa explained.
ActionAid is lobbying the government to retool its policies to better support local farmers and food producers as part of its banana flour project, as well as other food programs throughout the country.
Please join ActionAid in snuffing out poverty in Senegal by increasing locals capacity to feed their families and turn a profit though food processing.
