Nutri-Garri : Local Solutions to Malnutrition in Nigeria

According to a World Bank global health status report, malnutrition is the most pressing health problem implicated in the deaths of 16,000 children worldwide everyday & adversely affects the physical/cognitive development of generations of children. More than two billion people globally nearly one person in three have daily diets that lack sufficient vitamins and minerals, such as vitamin A, iron, and zinc, which are essential to health Known as “hidden hunger,” these deficiencies lead to blindness, stunting, cognitive impairment, disease, and death(Harvest Plus). Many diets, especially those of rural communities, contain insufficient amounts of vitamins and minerals due to lack of variation and/or consumption of predominantly processed foods.

Nutritious Garri known as Nutri-Garri is a social enterprise that addresses the serious health problem of Vitamin A deficiency while also acknowledging the interconnected issues of low income and limited space and water, families can produce their own sustainable source of vitamins. Nutri-Garri is to reduce micro nutrient malnutrition and improve dietary intakes of vitamin A and iron for 650,000 households in Africa .The project contributes greatly to Sustainable Development goals(SDG,1,2,&4) in three different components:

•  As for the environmental impact, Nutri-Garri is a social enterprise that addresses these related problems by providing trainings on how to build and maintain environmentally sustainable biofortified yellow cassava farms.
• With the vision to contribute to improved household resilience, protection and sustainable well-being of 6,000,000 children especially the most vulnerable by 2021. Nutri-Garri seeks to reduce hidden hunger by catalyzing sustainable investment for the utilization of biofortified crops (vitamin A cassava) at scale.
• The primary problem this project addresses is chronic malnutrition among the rural poor in Africa and general poverty situation. Nutri-Garri seeks to address that chronic malnutrition in diverse and interrelated ways, ensuring the viability of the community and their ability to improve urban living.

It is anticipated that about 300,000 farm families will benefit from this program.The primary beneficiaries are resource-poor farmers/producer groups, most of them women and children. While the secondary beneficiaries include small-and-medium-scale processors, fabricators, commodity traders, and consumers, private sector agribusiness entrepreneurs involved in cassava production, processing, handling, marketing, and consumption in the cassava sub sector who will benefit through increased cassava availability, demand and commercialization. Nutri-Garri seeks to ensure that the crop is still viable in the area, and to pass on life skills to the entire community to ensure continued food security. Through the creation of a cassava bank, the project will ensure that production remains sustainable.  Furthermore, Nutri-Garri provides solutions to micro-nutrient malnutrition by fortifying staple garri for over 500 million children & young women who are limited by expense & imprecision to access Iron, Vitamin A and Zinc. The strategy uses staple flours that are specially formulated to treat severely malnourished kids .

To fill the nutrition gap, Nutri-Garri is scientifically designed and tested flour that offers the simplest, fastest, and most cost-effective approach for replenishing essential vitamins and minerals in chronically malnourished children. In multiple large field trials, ingestion of the flour in their diets by malnourished children (4-6 times/week, 6-9 months) resulted in normalized blood micro nutrient levels, enhanced physical growth, and improved cognitive abilities.

We provide a tech-driven solution to farmers - by leveraging artificial intelligence and mobile phone technology, we’re able to personalize the education through a data-driven, yet, accessible, and scalable way. We created Cassava Link mobile phone technology for farmers for information dissemination and feedback for effective research – extension – farmer linkage.

How technology is integral to our solution:

Cassava Link is a network of cassava cooperative, the first global cooperative of cassava farmers, consisting of more than 10,000 small-scale farmer-owners in Nigeria. Farmers that use the mobile phone technology can obtain knowledge and information easily; they do not need to be educated before they can use the app since it will operate on a multiple Nigerian language system that cuts across language barriers. It’s convenient and easy to use.

Nutri-Garri is unique it  empowers communities to address the serious health problem of Vitamin A deficiency in children while also acknowledging the interconnected issues of low income and limited space and water, families can produce their own sustainable source of protein. This helps to reduce the environmental impact of food production and the emissions associated with packaging and transportation of food produced outside the  community. Secondly,  Nutri-Garri provides families with an additional source of income because they can sell excess garri to their community. Increased income means families have increased access to other resources necessary for improving health and education. Thirdly, Nutri-Garri introduces a unique process of preparing garri from cassava, provides maximum quality with cheaper rate alternative to the existing market and primarily designed for the malnourished children in Nigeria. Nutri-Garri aims to resolve the problems by increasing affordability, accessibility and awareness.

We use digital technology. Cassava Link is a problem solving platform and a source for market information for farmers, agro input suppliers, commodity traders, etc. Also, it is an all-in-one community for women to buy and sell products or services, share experiences and connect with like-minded women. Our mission is to alleviate global poverty and environmental degradation by providing farmers direct access to markets as well as a feedback mechanism for farmers to communicate with donors. It is a platform which makes your supply chain simple, easy and secure from farmer to consumer.  It manages your contracts, deliveries, inventory, orders, invoices and payments all in one place and in real time.

Many programs aimed at reducing malnutrition only address the nutritional aspect, but Nutri-Garri recognizes that malnutrition require addressing the related problems. Nutri-Garri contains all 60% vitamins ideal for human consumption. We provide people with the skills to produce their own low-cost and environmentally sustainable source of vitamins to improve their health.

How we will measure our progress:

Nutri-Garri primarily covers the major 5 states in Nigeria and targets to decrease 2-3% of the intensity of malnutrition rate within 5 years. Its awareness scheme aims to reduce the malnourished pregnant women at 5%. It contains vitamins and protein that are helpful to slow absorption of sugar and decreasing hyper-filtration respectively and huge job opportunities will be created for the local people. The success is measured in different ways:

• Outcome: 200 families will have Nutri-Garri

Measurement Plan: Number of women completing the program.

• Outcome: Each family will have access to recommended daily vitamins

Measurement Plan: Measuring the grams of Nutri- Garri produced by each participant per week during home visits conducted by community leaders and chiefs.

Since 2017, the number of people we have served is over 20,000 families in the 5 states of Nigeria who consumed garri. These include, children, women, youths, elderly etc both in rural and urban families.

In one year the project will serve over 500,000 people.

In the next five years; we hope to impact over five million children in the next 5 years of operation, reducing chronic hunger & undernourishment and to promote better health and growth. We also hope to improve market accessibility to over 10,000 farmers in the next 5 years of operation with potential for expansion.

In the next one year our goal is to create an impact for 3 million people around the world. We are nurturing our planet and addressing food security by supporting farmers, their families and farming communities across our value chain by sourcing responsibly, improving climate-smart agriculture practices and protecting soil health, water quality and habitats.

Through our nutritious foods, we are helping to unlock the potential of communities around the world. This work starts on the farm, supporting the people and communities who grow our food. That’s why, as part of our long term goals; we’ve pledged to improve the livelihoods of 800,000 farmers by advancing climate-smart agriculture practices that increase productivity and climate resiliency, while using fewer natural resources.

The barriers  that might limit our ability to succeed include consistent supply of improved varieties, seeds, ability to get investors to fund the project. Logistics and the  process of getting produce from farm to table, partnering with organizations to give product feedback and electricity issues.

We plan to combat these by establishing cassava bank where cassava stems can be stored for future use.  Developing a curriculum and train-the-trainer for farmers, fixing solar system when electricity is off .  secondly, exposing our project online and participating in more sponsored start-ups  across Nigeria and abroad.

5 workers as full time, 3 workers as part time and 2 contractors.

The Nutri-Garri team brings together three experienced leaders, entrepreneurs, and global health scholars. Nutri-Garri team have full time, part time staff and volunteers. The Department of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development, Universities of Uyo,Uyo provide a lot of Research and Development assistance. Also, our IT Partner, ROBHUBS Solutions ensure that there is a seamless real time information transfer and feedback response from the farmers via the mobile phone technology.  The team is the best to deliver this solution because of experienced professions on the team who are experts in global health in Nigeria and abroad.

Harvest Plus, Human Empowerment and Development Project(HEMADEP), All Farmers Association of Nigeria(AFAN)

Nutri-Garri business model is unique. Using the "Farmer Ownership Model" it is a win for all; farmers, processors, buyers and consumers where ownership means cassava farmers take responsibility to assume some direct and indirect roles in the cassava value chain, thus increasing their shared value equitably with processors and buyers before the cassava ceases to belong to them. Nutri-Garri has competitors but our model is unique.  The benefit of the garri consists of highly nutritive value to fight malnutrition. Our marketing strategy is devised to support our wide spanning distribution channel through 20 retail and super shops, and Community Nutrition Promoters (CNPs). The market linkage model of Nutri-Garri is between the target population or “clients,” small producers, local firms and cooperatives, and the external market. Nutri-Garri connects buyers to producers and vice versa, and charging fees for this service. Farmers are identified, linked to high yielding, disease resistant cassava varieties and supported with best agronomic practices (herbicide application, weeding, fertilizer application).

We currently operate from 5 stores in Uyo. We produce 20 bags of Nutri-Garri for 5customers monthly. We’re scaling 100 bags.  Already we've tested with a grocery store, hotel and 4 restaurants that are willing to work with us as we're learning and making money. This information will help us to do a larger test launch of the investor model where we get individuals to invest in our garri helping us better understand how to manage with more than just 5 customers to 10 customers, calculating returns as this will help us  in our hypothesis. This will help manage  our logistics on a slightly larger scale.  We have online market as well so we can grow our supply to schools outside Uyo.

Over half of deaths in children under-5 are associated with malnutrition. Vitamin A deficiency in particular leads to lifelong health consequences including stunted physical and cognitive development . Our main interest in Solve is   to bridge the gap in malnutrition and fight the problem of Vitamin A deficiency through our products in Africa.

We will like to partner with OXfam Nigeria, Solve, USAID, UNDP, Bill and Belinda gates foundation because of the tremendous work to end hunger in Africa.

We will like to apply for A1 innovations prize for Innovation for Women Prize. Since our team is working hard with rural women to change the nutritional standards of women using technology.