Transferring Cassava Processing Technology from Brazil to Africa

Abstract

Cassava is currently the fourth most important food production crop in tropical and developing countries. Cassava root and its by-products are the main source of calories for the diets of 800 million people in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia. Over the past 20 years, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and collaborators have been developing innovations for the use and postharvest processing of cassava. These technologies have been transferred and disseminated to technicians, entrepreneurs, producers, and processors of cassava from several African countries. This South-South cooperation has been conducted in Brazil through short trainings, workshops, and technical visits requested by national R&D institutions, cooperatives, cassava producers, and processors associations and sponsored by international agencies and foundations. In this chapter, we present an overview of the technology transfer activities of Embrapa Mandioca e Fruticultura carried out for Africa, focusing on technological innovations that result in products and by-products of cassava root processing, especially those with great potential for adoption and opening new markets for Africa (e.g., precooked and frozen cassava, cassava chips, among others). The selection of these innovations was based on observations of the trainees' preferences and interests for technologies that they envisioned willingness to apply and share the technology when returning to their countries.