Tesito Agriculture Extension Worker’s Assistant, Olie Gaye, participated in a five-day food processing training led by Fatim Gaye. The training introduced participants to various food processing techniques tailored to locally abundant raw materials. It aimed to equip participants with practical skills to increase the market value of food products, while also enabling them to apply these skills in their own projects to help rural farmers diversify their diets and improve nutritional intake.
Tesito Agriculture Extension Worker’s Assistant, Olie Gaye, participated in a five-day food processing training led by Fatim Gaye. The training introduced participants to various food processing techniques tailored to locally abundant raw materials. It aimed to equip participants with practical skills to increase the market value of food products, while also enabling them to apply these skills in their own projects to help rural farmers diversify their diets and improve nutritional intake.
The first two products participants learned to make were Super Cereal and yogurt. Super Cereal is a nutritious blend of flour, cereals, legumes, tubers (nutrient-rich underground plant structures), moringa and baobab powders. Participants were introduced to proper measuring, portioning and blending techniques, with particular emphasis placed on the nutritional value of the combined ingredients. Similar processing methods were applied when making yogurt, using water, milk powder, sweetener and flavouring.
Processing peppers into pepper sauce has become increasingly popular in The Gambia, thanks to its market potential and the favourable conditions for growing peppers. During this session, participants learned how to combine peppers and onions with vinegar, mustard, vegetable oil and seasonings. Proper packaging techniques were also introduced as an important part of the training.
Groundnuts were used to prepare two products: groundnut burgers and groundnut cake. For the burgers, savoury ingredients were combined and fried in vegetable oil to produce a snack that could be packaged and sold. The cake followed a similar process but was prepared as a sweet snack and packaged for sale.
The training concluded with the preparation of two herbal teas: Kinkinliba and Mbor-Mbor. In addition to learning how to process the leaves, Olie also gained practical knowledge of packaging the tea into ready-to-use tea bags for sale.
Overall, the training provided Olie and the other participants with practical knowledge and skills to process and package products made from eight locally available raw materials. These skills will subsequently be shared with local farmers and communities to improve local food processing practices and increase the market value of harvested and processed products.
The next step is to organise a skills-transfer workshop and training session for women farmers in Jiffarong!
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