How AEA empowers women, communities in shea butter, garri processing
A team member of the Rural Community Development and OVOP, Stephen Orji, said about 110 people in the community were trained in garri processing and about N10 million was used to establish the garri processing centre. The OVOP cassava project is expected to provide over 1000 jobs in the FGt directly and indirectly targeting mostly the rural populace. The project is part loan and part grant and they will pay back part of the money used to purchase the machine gradually.
Before now, the people complained about how their cassava was wasting; postharvest management was also a challenge before the centre was established.
“If this place is put into greater use, they can process eight tonnes of cassava into garri per day. But now they process only four tonnes every day, which is equivalent to 4,000 kilogramme of cassava per day.
“We are working with them to attain the full capacity of the place which is eight tonnes of cassava per day,” Orji says.
The One-Village OneProduct Initiative is a strategy adopted to bring about economic empowerment on a massive scale in communities by identifying local produce and products based on the principle of comparative advantage and developing them into competitive products which will be acceptable in the domestic and global markets.
Orji said the agency plans to establish more entrepreneurship centres in other communities in the FCT through the project.
“We have written a proposal to the minister of the FCT about establishing more centres in other communities in the FCT. There are other things we want to develop, like ginger, tomatoes in other communities. Every community has something to offer,” he said.