Rice
is the most rapidly growing food source across Africa and has become critical
for food security in many countries. With increasing urbanization, the demand
for convenience foods like rice is rising in the continent.
“There
is strong evidence that to keep poor farmers and processors in business, they
need to produce better quality rice,” said Dr John Manful, grain quality
scientist at the Africa Rice Center (AfricaRice).
However,
African rice farmers are confronted with great difficulty in selling their rice
due to prevailing perceptions about the poor quality of locally produced rice.
In many African countries, locally milled rice is of variable quality with a
high percentage of broken grains.
Sometimes
unhusked grains as well as bran and husk fractions are found in the milled
rice. The poorer quality local rice is therefore not competitive against
imported rice on the market.
AfricaRice
Interim Director General Dr Adama Traoré explained that AfricaRice is helping
small farmers and processors across Africa to add economic, nutritional and
environmental value to rice by reducing postharvest losses, improving grain
quality and exploring alternative uses of rice ‘waste’ products (rice bran,
husk and straw).
“Such
efforts to enrich the lives of small rice farmers and processors are well
aligned with this year’s World Food Day theme “Family Farming: Feeding the
world, caring for the earth,” said Dr Traoré.
The
Center and its partners are promoting the diversification of the use of rice to
stimulate commercialization and consumption of local rice. They are testing the
use of low-value broken rice – which would otherwise be sold at a discounted
price on the local market – as the basis of a breakfast porridge fortified with
protein-rich groundnut or soybean for undernourished babies and children.
As
part of a collaborative Canada-funded AfricaRice project, Ms Lynda Hagan, scientist
at the Food Research Institute (FRI) in Ghana, has developed a recipe for
noodles using flour from low grade rice and wheat. This rice noodle preparation,
as shown in a video recently produced by AfricaRice, is a good example of
diversification from the traditional wheat-flour noodles.
According
to Lynda, tasty and innovative uses of rice can catalyze rural enterprises and
raise income, especially for women farmers and processors in the continent.
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