Cassava Utilisation: Council Urges Encouragement, Training

Director-General, Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC)  Prof. Peter Onwualu, said on Tuesday in Abuja that Nigeria did not need a law to encourage cassava utilisation.

Onwualu said rather than official policy, aggressive promotion, encouragement and training would encourage millers and bakers to embrace the use of cassava as part of composite flour.

He said at a forum of the News Agency of Nigeria’s (NAN) that though cassava was primarily used as food, it could be used as industrial raw material and for the manufacture of more than 1000 different products.

He said that over the years, the RMRDC had been partnering with flour millers on how to add 10 per cent or 20 per cent cassava flour to the normal flour for baking.

“We consider cassava as an industrial raw material. Of course you know cassava has many uses; you can have up to 1000 different products from cassava, so it’s not just cassava flour.

“We are talking about cassava flour because that’s an area that if we succeed, the quantum of flour that can be used can be enormous and therefore we can reduce a lot of foreign exchange.

“The ultimate thing is to get bakers, confectionary producers, everybody who needs flour to start using it.

“The idea was that if they agree to start using this then naturally, their suppliers will know that they are also looking for high quality cassava flour as well as wheat.

“And so those suppliers will begin to look for those who can produce this high quality cassava flour.

Onwualu also told NAN that there had been attempts in the past to make flour millers to add percentages of cassava that was recommended alongside wheat, but such had not yielded much result.

He said that if millers had cooperated fully, those who intended to go into high quality cassava milling would have been guaranteed ready market.

The director-general said the frustration in getting the required machines for full cassava processing was a major challenge in the cassava industry, but assured that the RMRDC was already partnering to get involve local fabricators.

He particularly pointed at high quality cassava flash dryer, which he said posed a major challenge to fabricate locally in the past, but expressed satisfaction that with the intervention of the RMRDC, good local fabricators of the machines had emerged.

Onwualu urged entrepreneurs to take advantage of the technology to begin the production of high quality cassava flash dryers.

“So you can have like 1000 or 2000 of such cassava mills all over the country run by private people not by a research institute or a government agency and they will be producing and then some business men can buy from them and supply to the millers or to the bakers.

“Another approach would be to train bakers and people who make cakes and so on to know how they can do the mixing.

“And we have thousands of bakers and if these people were trained and they agree and they are motivated to go into this, you don’t need any National Assembly or anybody to enact a law.

“They can just gradually be using this; 10 per cent 20 per cent as long as they adhere to the quality and actually NAFDAC has a standard for high quality cassava flour.

“If you conform to that we are sure that that flour is safe and so I believe that this is the way to go.

Onwualu also called for greater empowerment of private sector operators to enable them to change their production line and harness research findings in cassava flour production.

He said that if fully implemented and bakers as well as mixers began to use cassava flour, the economy would be the better for it.

He said that although Nigeria was already the largest producer of cassava, a lot of work still had to be done in the area of value addition.

Onwualu told NAN that the council had investment profiles on the many uses of cassava and was willing to share such with willing investors.