East Africa: Project Seeks to Avail Pre-Cooked Bean Products to EA Market
By Otieno Owino
A new partnership to develop high quality locally processed pre-cooked bean products to raise incomes for smallholder farmers, improve nutrition and create job opportunities in Kenya and Uganda has been launched.
The partnership launched in Kenya on Tuesday November 25, with a funding USD 2.5 million brings together researchers, farmers, and manufacturers to develop products that will offer an alternative to canned and chilled beans currently available in the market but are unaffordable to a majority of the consumers.
The project will test models for increasing the production and supply of bean varieties suitable for processing into pre-cooked beans, assess demand, test promotion mechanisms and promote consumption of precooked beans for different consumer groups.
According to Eliud Kireger, director general Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), the project will address food and nutritional issues in East Africa and the problem of malnutrition in Kenya where approximately 5 percent of children under five are wasted, and another 16 percent are underweight.
“The common bean is a major staple food in eastern and southern Africa where it is recognized as the second most important source of human dietary protein and third most important source of calories among all agricultural commodities produced in the region,” said Kireger.
Jean Claude Rubyogo, a seed system specialist at International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) significant research efforts have been put in the development of nutritious, better tasting, and attractive colour beans varieties.
“What we now want to do is to add value to these varieties by processing so as to take less time to cook and fit into the lifestyle of both the increasing urban and peri-urban populations” Rubyogo said.
The researchers project that introduction of value added bean products will create demand hence spur production of suitable pre-cooked bean varieties thereby increasing returns for small holder farmers.
Bean production in the region does not meet current demand. Kenya, for example produces only 427996 metric tonnes of dry beans per year and imports approximately 443000 metric tonnes from the East African region, almost a third of this from Uganda.
There is growing demand for high value food commodities opening up new opportunities for farmers. Developing precooked bean products will support farmers to plug into new markets that have a strong potential to delver higher returns for the farmers.
A number of farmers groups and processing farms have been roped in to provide expertise in processing and support in the pre-cooked bean products value chain.
The project is funded by Cultivate Africa’s Future Fund (CultiAF) set up by Cananda’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research.
It is led by KALRO and Uganda’s National Research Organization (NARO) among other partners.