This partnership aims to reduce the post-harvest losses of AIVs, during the high production season, by addition value to their vegetables (drying). This will result in extending the shelf-life from 7 days to 12 months, and making the available this product throughout the year, at relatively stable prices, for BoP consumers. The reduction of post-harvest losses will also guarantee improved incomes to smallholder farmers. In addition, the year-round processing of the vegetables will ensure permanent jobs (currently all the jobs are seasonal at the factory which disrupts the incomes of the rural women employed at the factory).
Year-round, affordable, nutritious dried African Indigenous Vegetables (AIVs)
Country
About the partnership
Fresh Produce
Kenya
About the business champion
Sweet ‘n’ Dried is a young-female led agro-processing enterprise that specializes in processing of fruits, vegetables, and grains into dried products and assorted flours. Based in Tharaka-Nithi county, it works with over 1,200 smallholder farmers (60% women) in the upper and lower eastern parts of Kenya. Current products include dried mangoes, dried ripe bananas, composite porridge flour (pearl millet, sorghum, ripe banana, and carrot), dried amaranth seeds, pumpkin flour, and an assortment of dried African Indigenous Vegetables. It has also carried out trials on dried kales/spinach/cabbage mix and dried amaranth leaves which are planned for commercialization once they are certified by the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KeBS).
Key interventions
BoP marketing and distribution
Private sector development and entrepreneurship
Agribusiness cluster formation and access to inputs, technologies
Facilitate finance inclusion
Climate smart agriculture, and access to new technologies
Women Economic Empowerment and youth inclusion
Get in touch
Curious about this partnership? Get in touch with the partnership facilitator.
E-mail Judith Chabari
Partnership Facilitator
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Judith Chabari |
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jchabari@2scale.org |
Project partners
Dryland Seeds Company (DSL)
Emerging Kenyan private seed company working together with partner organizations to develop and commercialize climate smart seeds
County government of Tharaka Nithi
Department of agriculture which provides government extension services
Koppert Biological Systems
Produces sustainable cultivation solutions for food crops and ornamental plants
Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO)
Establish legal and institutional to coordinate agricultural research