Peeling cassava - Photo by Rory Hillocks
Peeling cassava - Photo by Rory Hillocks

The Cassava: Adding Value for Africa (C:AVA) project, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is now in its fifth year. NRI has produced a short video to help viewers understand how the project’s value chain development model works.

 

The C:AVA project works with partners in Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi to develop value chains for High Quality Cassava Flour (HQCF) and related products, to improve the incomes and livelihoods of smallholder farmers and processors. Value chains for HQCF have now been successfully established in each country.

The new 17 minute video tells the story through the value chain of how the project is developing the HQCF value chain, using examples from each of the five countries. It gives good insight into how the project works and includes interviews with the Project Director, Project Manager, the Country Managers and smallholder farmers from Ghana and Uganda. The HQCF value chain approach is presented in the video using easy to understand motion graphics.

This project is an important part of NRI’s research and development programme on tropical root and tuber crops that also includes the European Commission funded ‘Gratitude’ project, which aims to overcome losses and add value to wastes in cassava and yam value chains, and the CassavaGMarkets project, which is delivering research outputs to improve livelihoods of smallholder farmers through better access to growing markets for cassava based products.

For those short of time, a 4 minute version of the video has also been produced: http://vimeo.com/75945769