Fish and chips, Kenyan style

11 February 2014

Image: Ali Imboyoka with a freshly-caught tilapia in Kenya.

By Nigel Harris, Farm Africa's Chief Executive

Fish and chips - as British as you can get? Farm Africa’s stall at last year’s World’s 50 Best Restaurants Awards gave an African twist to an old British favourite, as we served fried tilapia fish with cassava chips. As the chosen charity for the Awards, we wanted to give our stall an appropriate food theme. Now I’m in Kisumu in Western Kenya, visiting cassava farmers, and yes, fish farmers.

First, cassava. Not well-known on supermarket shelves in the UK, cassava is a well-established food in Kenya and elsewhere in eastern Africa and is now becoming a great source of both income and carbohydrates for local farmers. The BBC once called cassava “the Rambo crop” as it’s incredibly tough – not to eat, I hasten to add, but in its tolerance to drought and therefore its ability to grow, even in water-stressed areas.

Western Kenya in February is seriously hot and dry, but cassava thrives. The key to making money from cassava (vital if the farmers are going to educate their children and re-invest in their farms) is the ability to wash, dry and process it. Fresh cassava will rot very quickly once harvested, but if processed, it can be turned into flour, cakes, bread, chips and even cassava crisps. We visited Rose, a local baker, who bakes two hundred and fifty cassava  loaves a day, all of which sell out rapidly in the nearby market. We ate cassava mandazi, known as 'East African donuts', freshly baked by the local farmers’ group in their special oven. They’re so delicious we bought more to take with us. Through successful cassava harvests and small-scale processing supported by Farm Africa, this group of sixty farmers has saved more than £7,000 over the last year, which they can lend to group members for further business opportunities. As one says with a smile, “there’s money in cassava.”

Next day, it’s the turn of the fish. We met with Saul who, with Farm Africa's help, has successfully set up his own business providing fish feed and expert advice to farmers. We also met the legendary AFULA women’s group, which regular readers will remember from Farm Africa’s “Dig for Good” expedition last year, where leading women from the UK food industry worked alongside local community members to dig a fish pond the size of a swimming pool. We saw the fish being fed in preparation for harvest. Aquaculture is of course a doubly-effective intervention, as it has both financial and nutritional benefits for the farmers. Farm Africa is working with a dozen local entrepreneurs to serve more than 4,000 fish farmers in the region, and thanks to this support Saul can plan his next business move - helping market the fish to hotels in the local towns and investigating the possibility of transporting fish to the growing urban population in Nairobi. We listened to the women talk movingly of the difference that the extra income has made to their families, and we dream of more fish and chips, Kenyan style, which are changing lives as well as menus.