Year-round, affordable, nutritious dried African Indigenous Vegetables (AIVs)

About the partnership

Fresh Produce

Kenya

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).

About the business champion

Sweet & 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 financial inclusion

Climate smart agriculture, and access to new technologies

Women economic empowerment and youth inclusion