Project
Product and Market Development for Sorghum and Pearl Millet in West Africa
Details
Project Code:
PRF 102
Start Date:
2008
End Date:
2012
CRSP Phase:
Not Available
Budget:
Not Available
Countries:
Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa
Participants
Lead University:
Purdue University
Other Partners:
Not Available
Principal Investigator(s):
Bruce R. Hamaker
Co-Principal Investigator(s):
None
Links
Overview
The principal goal of this project is to expand markets in West Africa for sorghum and millet through working with NARS scientists/technologists on processing of the grains to competitive products or through more fundamental studies on how to improve the grain properties in a way that would expand usage. For the first, we are working on a variety of projects in five West African countries (Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Nigeria) on improving different aspects of processing and building relationships with entrepreneurs or processor associations. In Niger at the INRAN processing lab, the project has formed the basis for a well-functioning incubation center where currently 10 women’s associations have been trained and use the facility to sell high quality flour and agglomerated products (couscous, degue, boullet) into the marketplace. A suitable market has developed for these products such that a local funding group has lent -$60,000 to one of the groups to build a mechanized processing facility, and as well is funding a fabricator in Maradi (2nd city in Niger) to make equipment pieces for the enterprise
Objectives
1. Further develop, refine, and transfer technologies to appropriate West African NARS food technology laboratories to make high quality sorghum and millet processed foods (e.g., pregelatinized "instant" sorghum, agglomerated products, and millet flours for thin and thick porridges), 2. Through the project funded by the Mali USAID mission, work to create a successful incubation center at IER-LTA/Sotuba to assist Bamako area entrepreneurs with new processing technologies to expand the sorghum and millet product markets; and continue to work with the current six, and possibly more, millet and/or sorghum processing enterprises in the Mopti and Gao regions of north-central Mali, 3. Facilitate work towards the optimization of products and processes through a partnership approach between West African NARS food technologists and entrepreneurs, 4. Continue collaborative work on nutritionally-enhanced sorghum lines developed at Purdue to improve grain quality, 5. In collaboration with Institut de Technologie Alimentaire in Dakar and with G. Ejeta, continue work towards the goal of enhancing wheat-like properties of sorghum grains for high incorporation ofsorghum (high digestibility/high lysine mutant lines) into baked products (mainly bread), 6. Train two West African scientists to the Ph.D. level (Malian, Mohamed Diarra at University of Maiduguri, Nigeria under advisement of Prof. Iro Nkama and B. Hamaker; and Aminata Diatta at Universite Cheikh Anta DIOP, Dakar, Senegal) and two to the M.S. level (Cholewinski at Purdue and M. Goodall at Purdue, with partial funding from INTSORMIL)
Outcomes
Coming soon
