The root is used to make “eba” and “fufu” — filling pastes that are beloved dishes in Nigerian homes — but there are a myriad of uses for cassava, including making flour and beer.
The problem — and opportunity — that cassava production presents is that Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, does not produce as much as it could, nor of the quality to make it a thriving business. To enable Nigeria to wean itself off imports of rice and wheat, a project aims to help farmers ramp up cassava production through a new scheme with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “Nigeria spends 635 billion naira ($3.2 billion) annually on wheat importation,” a leading agronomist and representative of the agriculture minister, Comfort Doyin Awe, said. Cassava should emerge as a wheat substitute instead, with Nigerians baking loaves of cassava bread, she told experts at a meeting organised by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in the southwestern city of Ibadan late last month. As it is eaten across west Africa, cassava could even become a much-needed foreign currency earner, if Nigerian farmers and processors can improve the quality of their production.
 

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