MISTAL FOREST FOODS

Globally, approximately 704 million people are food insecure, 2 billion people are moderately food insecure and 49.5 million children are malnourished (FAO, 2020); 706 million people in Namibian are food insecure (FAO, 2013; WFP, 2017) while 1 in 4 children suffer from malnutrition (Unicef, 2018; Namibian Newspaper, 2019; University of Namibia, 2017).   

Namibia’s 7-million-hectare-wide-forests grow indigenous fruit trees that do not require irrigation or clearing of land.   The local problem of scaling this food supply is the inefficient, costly and time-consuming process required to convert these forest fruits into ready to cook, nutritious foods.  

Our solution is an analytical value addition process that ensures we can add value to this food resource while reducing the time of processing by 90% and the cost of production by approximately 80% and making our variety of products cost the consumer less than 30 to 50% of what it currently costs them.

Traditionally, forest fruits take 10-days to boil, peel, pound, grind, sieve to be processed into easier forms of food; discouraging locals from processing the whole fruit into ready to cook food.   

The forests are vast and are as far as 20km away from villages, further discouraging the locals from collecting them for sustainable consumption, and therefore the fruits are usually left to spoil despite a strong demand for them in bigger markets. 

Once processed, these raw foods have to be transported from villages to be sold to town and the revenue generated does not encourage the effort put into the whole process. The lack of economics of scale in processing also contributes to the efficiency and difficulty for the activity to be profitably sustainable.

706 million people in Namibian are food insecure (WFP, 2017) while 1 in 4 children suffer from malnutrition (Unicef, 2018).   

According to the African Development Bank (AfDB), Africa is a net importer of food with more than USD 30 billion in annual spending from Europe and American markets.

Contributing factors are inefficiencies in sourcing, poor economics of scale and limited capacity in food processing and value addition; and lack of value-addition for the target market.

We have an in-house developed, analytically confirmed processing methodology where we lower specific heat capacities of the food products to speed up our processes as we process our products to ensure quality of end products and preservation of nutrition in the products.  We hope to be ISO (International Organization for Standardization) accredited in the very near future.

We are developing an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) helpdesk to
communicate with our clients, including the women from the communities that collect the indigenous forest fruits.  This allows us to quantify the density of fruit bearing species and will assist us in demarcating processing hubs as we grow our business.

We aim to scale this solution by creating a network of suppliers in rural communities, building a sustainable supply chain of these raw materials which are efficiently processed to ensure a year-round, value-added supply of staple, indigenous food products to Namibia and the export markets while increasing the income of the communities we source from.

We have interviewed several women from the surrounding villages and have learned of the challenges they have in creating a sustainable food supply from the forest fruits, especially aggravated by their location and lack of finances to purchase equipment and knowledge to operate such machinery.   

Our target suppliers are women that live in villages in the Kavango
and Zambezi regions of Namibia and walk very long distances to collect
forest fruits and labor tirelessly to make them into forms that can be
cooked and consumed easily.  Additionally, storage for these is usually a
challenge and therefore collect a limited amount of food at a time,
usually for consumption for a few days.

We have also conducted surveys at business expos to gauge the interest of urban dwellers's need for accessible indigenous food products and the response has confirmed a great demand for this food supply.

The Kavango and Zambezi region demographics consume these food products as a staple food (13 percent of the Namibian population).   The Ovambo (49.8% Namibia’s population) and the San (2.9% of Namibia’s population) demographics consume these as well but to a lesser degree as these fruits do not grow locally in their geographic settings (NationalStatisticsAgency, 2020).

Indigenous forest fruits do not require irrigation nor clearing of land for growth thus our solution is low impact.  The food is nutritious and we produce a wide range of value added options.  The relish produced is equivalent to an alternative, low carbon protein.

Our solution takes our traditional methods of food value addition and apply chemistry and food technology practices to make the process more efficient, hygienic and to have a higher yield of processed products.

The University of Namibia is currently studying some of the indigenous food sources but they have a limited range of products and are not ISO accredited.  Herbalife Nutrition Limited produces protein shakes as we do, but they have contradicting claims about healthy weight loss benefits whereas our clients have not complained about any of our products since launching in September 2019.

Our solution is unique in that we have embraced traditional methods and have strengthened them with scientific research, trial runs and have produced amazing, nutritious, healthy products.

We simply studied our indigenous food sources and applied thermodynamics especially in terms of adsorption and heat capacity to speed up our food production processes without altering the food products.  This has also incredibly resulted in food that stays fresh for longer and the shelf life of our products spans to similar shelf lives of products in commercial spaces to which preservatives have been added.

MISTAL Food Department

We are still waiting for Intellectual Property protection of our analytical methodologies and therefore we regretfully do not feel comfortable to share these online.

We simply applied our knowledge of thermodynamics and food technology to execute this.

Our inputs are the communities that supply us with raw indigenous food sources, MISTAL's Food Department and material and equipment.

Our output is value added indigenous food products, our consumers with a steady supply of value added indigenous food products.

Our outcome is the reduction in malnutrition and food insecurity, processing hubs at several villages to efficiently continue our work, having more stakeholders benefit from our work, expansion of line of indigenous food types.

Currently about 5 000.

In 1 year, 100 000.

In 5 years, 2 500 000.

We aim to solidify our methodology and get ISO accredited.

We would also like to have a wider range of products and be selling in more than 1 town as we currently have one work space in Rundu.

We aim to have at least 10 processing hubs in the Kavango region and at least 5 in the Zambezi region in 5 years and for the whole lab, MISTAL, to be ISO accredited in all methodologies by then.

We need more capital to purchase equipment that the South African National Accreditation System (SANAS) requires for us to be using before they can commence the ISO accreditation process.

We also need technical partners with fore years of experience in the food processing industry to guide us and to mentor us as we grow.

We are increasing our productivity in order to raise the capital we need.

We are actively searching for mentors in the food industry, from NGO's and neighbouring countries including South Africa and Zambia.  Our efforts have been greatly stalled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

We are a team of 6 in the company. 

Full time = 1

Part-time = 5

Casual = 4

Consultant = 1

Our collective expertise is in Chemistry which helps us understand the thermodynamics and analytical methodologies we have adapted and perfected to execute our objectives.  The knowledge of the food technology and biochemistry industries have helped us understand and adapt our methodologies such that our products have a fairly long shelf life, have great recipe development such as good taste and texture, to mention but a few.

The knowledge of statistics and agricultural research has been great at delineating an approach to engage the community, understand our data in more meaningful ways and work efficiently.

Our accountant has ensured that we make wise financial decisions, including having the team work from home when researching on new products at the start of our project while carrying out other work to ensure that we can make respective living while working together; as well as fundraising for our lab and ensuring we stay afloat.

The Office of the Governor of the Kavango East Region provides us with a platform to market our products and services.  Food Namibia is helping us to aproach donors and technical partners as we seek to raise funds and to find mentors and technical partners.

We sell value added indigenous food products to consumers.  These food products are a staple food that unfortunately takes very long to prepare and our consumers are very happy to be able to purchase them in ready to cook forms.

We currently sell from our work space as well as a grocery store in Rundu.  Some of our customers place orders and we send them the supplies through our distributors in Windhoek and Swakopmund.

Solve will provide us with a platform that will give us exposure to like-minded, motivated, inspiring people that in one way or another will find some way to work with us to contribute to solving food insecurity, malnutrition.

Our solution needs to be ISO accredited and Solve has access to great
mentors, partners and investors that would help us achieve our objective
and be able to scale to the rest of Namibia and the export markets.

We are a young team with limited experience in the industry and would benefit from the guidance of seasoned experts in the field of food technology, chemistry, research, business and value addition.

We also need some guidance on effective marketing for our products and services.

The MIT Faculty and Solve teams with the experience and guidance to push us and challenge us will be greatly beneficial as partners.

They would be able to confirm our analytical methodologies and advice us on where we can improve.

We would benefit by learning from them and having their teams oversee our operations and activities while guiding us on where we could improve.

Our solutions aims to make the life of women and girls in rural communities easier by saving them time and from having to walk long distances to collect forest food.

Our solution also provides them with income generation for any products that they supply to us.

We are also training them on hygienic processes of collecting and preserving food and storage with longer shelf life.

The Women Prize will allow us to scale up and reach more women and young girls in rural communities.

Our solution bears sustainability and climate change mitigation in mind by adapting a source that does not require irrigation to grow and does not clear agricultural land but maintains the environment in the pristine condition that we find it in.  Our solution is future-minded.

Our solution also will use the prize to scale our operations such that more people can rely on this food source and not aggravate climate change effects.  Our plant-based alternative proteins are already a staple food source amongst the locals and it will not be difficult to scale the solution to the rest of the country and the SADC region where similar forests and trees grow.