A coalition of companies led by Shine Bridge Global Inc. has sought a partnership with the Nigeria Agricultural Development Fund (NADF) on cassava production and processing.
The Chairman and Co-Founder, Shine Bridge Global Inc., a U.S.-based company, Dr Tony Bello who specialises in food processing, manufacturing, marketing and financing innovations, disclosed this in Abuja.
Bello, who spoke at a roundtable with top management officers of NADF, said cassava industrialisation would feed local and global markets worth more than 7 billion dollars.
He said that the initiative was to produce two categories of products– instant cassava flakes mixes and intantised tapioca starch otherwise referred to as processed cassava.
According to him, the companies are able to create any kind of ready-to-eat consumer package food because of food science and technology inventions.
Bello, a former Senior Technical Adviser on Agribusiness to Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, said that there was an estimated 7 billion dollars global market for gluten-free products.
The expert explained that gluten-free products which stemmed from cassava were essentially healthier substitutes for wheat flour and cereal grains.
“Processed cassava starch, which is known as tapioca by the food and beverage industries, seems to be the leading functional food ingredient in the world in terms of consumer friendliness compared to gums and cereal grains.
“So, considering what we all know already about cassava, let us bring our technology innovations to make cassava more functional beyond a commodity.
“Commodity wise, Nigeria is not able to compete against the number one processor of cassava in the world, which is Thailand; followed closely by Indonesia; hence, we have Indonesian partners with us here today.
“They are not so advanced that their models will not fit our needs, but they are not so big that they see us as a threat; so, culture wise and scale of investment, we are very much aligned.
“The second thing on the ready-to-eat food products is the speed to market not just for the functional foods like tapioca products, but ready-to-eat consumer packaged goods in Nigeria such as baked goods.
“We cannot do this without improved agricultural production and productivity; we cannot implement cassava industrialisation in Nigeria without sustainable agricultural best practices and strategic partnerships with local producers and processors.’’
He said that cassava processing could not be done sustainably without having a Nigerian institution to incubate the transformative project.
According to him, the group is bringing in its collective years of experience in food science innovation and advancement as well as its supply chain and understanding of what works elsewhere.
“We are looking at social impact; we believe in this country; but we need an institution such as the National Agricultural Development Fund to incubate this project and scale.
“For us, it is a new thing happening in Nigeria; we pride ourselves in bringing others along because our specialised knowledge brings about catalytic impact,” he said.
Bello said that the institutional mandate of NADF aligned so much with plans and strategy of the coalition; hence, the need for the partnership.
A representative of Andritz Group, a Netherlands company, that invents scalable original equipment with world-leading products and services for a wide range of industries, Mr Sander Swartz explained that the coalition required food technologies for the project.
He said that dehydartion processing technologies were required to produce functional ingredients and ready-to-eat foods, otherwise known as cold water soluble food.
Schwatz explained that foods such as cereal flakes did not require the usual cooking, saying that water could just be added and it was ready to eat.
“So we have done experiments a few years ago, repeated experiments with local cassava starch and it worked very well using Shine Bridge Global technologies.
“So this is the basis of collaboration and partnerships; the multinationals have been almost like a monopolist for so long, and now we see other companies jumping in.
“The new companies have expanded a lot but there is a huge competitive space waiting to enter the same functionality; and that is what this group wants to do,” he said.
On her part, a Nigerian partner, Ms Mosun Abira said that the new technologies would empower women and local communities.
She said that the technology currently being used by Nigerian women did not produce the same output across different locations because of the variation in the heat applied to drying the products.
The Director of PT. Asindo Tech, an Indonesian tech company, Mr Fidiranto Fidiranto said that the firm had abundant capacity to process cassava into ready-to-eat foods.
Fidiranto exhibited a variety of ready-to-eat products produced by the company while expressing readiness to replicate the same feat in Nigeria as there were a lot of similarities between Nigeria and Indonesia.
Responding, the Head of Investments Unit, NADF, Mr Gbemiga Oladele, commended the initiative, describing it as exciting.
He said that the cassava project would be deliberated upon at the management meeting and feedback would be given to the coalition.
Earlier, the Head, Partnerships and Delivery, Mr Nasir Ingawa, said that the NADF was established in 2020 by an Act of Parliament to provide agricultural financing.
He said that the agency was also required to provide support for evidence-based agricultural research.
The high point of the roundtable was the presentation of plaque and other souvenirs to NADF in recognition of effective delivery on its mandate.
NAN
