Food Processing - Preparation

Meeting Debbie was one of our first priorities upon arriving in Kumasi. We came down to the guest house lobby on Thursday morning to find her smiling and looking impeccably ”smart,” as Ghanaians would say, in stark contrast to ourselves, who hadn't quite adjusted to the heat and early mornings of Ghana. Debbie showed us around Kumasi’s Central Market, a place where you can buy anything and people move like liquid in quick, thin currents. We weaved among canyon-like aisles of fabric and food vendors calling out to everyone passing by. That evening, we shared a delicious Ghanaian meal (if you haven't had Ghanaian food, seek some out!) in preparation for the first dayof work.

Suame Magazine is a treasure trove of mechanical artifacts salvaged from every machine imaginable. It seems like we’ve set up right in the middle of it all, but in fact we’re on the edge; Suame is the one of the largest manufacturing districts in west Africa, if not the largest. We spent Friday working in ITTU, a KNUST machine shop where Debbie and the Ghana team fabricate QueenTech’s products. Over the weekend we would be going on a number of community visits which would require us to have a variety of spare parts and tools for field repairs. We also needed to build a brand new cassava grater and press to sell to a first-time customer on the trip. Although Debbie and the Ghana team had already completed the structural components of the grater and press, we had a full day of mounting hardware and quality-checking the machines to get them ready for our customers, the women that are at the heart of this venture. 

Debbie, Chief Executive of QueenTech

Each sale of a machine is exciting progress for QueenTech because it immediately allows for greater independence and convenience in a woman’s often grueling cassava-processing routine. They go through this strenuous process to produce a product called “gari,” highly valued for its 6-month shelf-stability, which helps to provide reliable food and income to many people who have neither. First, they peel the woody bark off of the root and cut it into pieces, which they do quickly and effectively with only a large knife. They then grate the root, which involves bending over a sharp grating sheet for hours. Next, the ground root is left in a press to ferment and is finally dried into the final value-added product. Pressing typically requires either carrying the cassava to and from a presser, who charges for the service, or enlisting male friends or relatives to lift large, heavy rocks onto the bag of cassava. 

Claire, a new team member

 QueenTech’s products address the most burdensome parts of the process, so they have a drastic impact on women’s profits and the level of control they have over their businesses. These impacts have been recognized by platforms like Womentum, a nonprofit that funds women entrepreneurs, which funded our newest customer’s machines.

Honoring the commitment of Womentum’s generous donors (and us to our users) required our team to figure out how to weld even after the power went out during our workday on Friday--we loaded the machines into the trotro, carried them to the balcony of our guest house, and completed their assembly using the only working outlet we could find. Our customer’s grater may have processed its first cassava in a guest house bathtub, but we’re confident that it will be running in the field for years to come!