Cassava is one of the major foods consumed in Ghana. It is a major contributor to food security and livelihood in rural areas. Cassava is normally processed to flour using thermal energy before it is consumed or traded. In addition, the consumption of this product in schools, urban and rural areas across the country coupled with recent high demand of the product in other West African countries, makes the product a viable business venture. The community in Adaklu produces and cooks cassava (gari) for their own consumption and for sale.
They cook the gari and sell it as a processed product. They have been using traditional cook stoves but SAG introduced more efficient community stoves. Through SAG intervention, AGI has built one efficient cook stove in this community in which multiple benefits were noted. The quality of the gari produced was better as reviewed by the consumers. The women explained that they do not suffer from smoke related diseases anymore as the introduced stove mitigated the excessive smoke emissions.
Significantly, the time spent making gari has reduced by more than 50% which has freed up more time for the women to perform other chores. From taking two days to process 105kg of gari, they now take two hours to process a similar amount. They have also seen an increase in their profit margins as they now spend 25 cedis to process 150kg of gari, down from 60 cedis. This cooking stove has performed so well that it led to a replication by the West African Agricultural Productivity Programme (WAAPP) programme funded by the Word Bank, where they installed two similar stoves to ensure everyone can process gari when required, noting that when market day approaches, demand rises necessitating the extra stoves
