The Impact of Low-Tech to Achieve Zero Hunger

I didn’t know what it meant to make one bag of cassava flour, the local sweet potato equivalent of Liberia. 

“How much does it cost to produce one bag of cassava flour?”

A few years ago, I asked Sarah this question as we wandered the hot, humid food production facility she manages in central Liberia. This is not just any factory, but a brand-new facility built with institutional aid money, complete with $200,000 of production equipment and a ribbon-cutting ceremony that included the Liberian President.

I spent my afternoon with Sarah because I wanted to know how foreign aid was being spent and the impact it was having on local agricultural systems. 

Sarah shared the answer, and we stopped to lean on a dusty cassava press to do the math…

What we quickly concluded was that the facility had to be running at over 100 percent capacity just to break even, due to the high cost of the generator fuel that’s needed to run these new imported machines. And if a machine breaks? Hopefully, Sarah could pay for someone to be flown into Liberia for the repairs. Sarah had run these numbers before and knew they raised concerns about the factory’s viability. But when you are a small Liberian business offered $200,000 worth of equipment, how can you say no? With the equipment can come grants, technical support and prestige.

A few weeks later I met with the organization responsible for purchasing the $200,000 worth of equipment for Sarah’s facility. I asked if they had run the numbers that Sarah and I had looked at earlier on that dusty cassava press. The answer? Not one of the dozens of people managing this multi-million-dollar agriculture development project had looked at the unit economics of operating this equipment.

It had been assumed that high-tech processing equipment was the solution Liberia’s agriculture sector needed, but no one had taken the time to do the basic math to determine how much generator fuel was needed to run such equipment.  

This is the reality of how many people think about agriculture sector development in emerging economies. No one asks about the costs of electricity, or the unit economics of selling cassava flour, or the capacity of local machinists to maintain and repair equipment. Systems that are “higher tech” are inherently seen as the right approach. And this can be true, in many contexts. But because large institutional aid projects are usually designed in a headquarters in London, Washington, D.C. or Brussels, local realities are often ignored.

In my years since my Sarah interaction, I’ve seen this scenario over and over again. An exhausting reality and challenge for the individuals who are trying to change the food landscapes in their home countries. 

When it comes to a place like Liberia, with some of the world’s most complex infrastructure challenges, a more nuanced approach to thinking about technological innovation is a must. Technology is not always the answer. Technology can be used to help find an answer, but if you’re trying to implement a project in rural Liberia without understanding the realities of doing business there, you’ll soon discover how limited high-tech solutions can be.  

At Tailored Food, we are on a mission to ensure that everyone, everywhere, eats well. Leveraging local machinists and our network of technical volunteers with backgrounds as process engineers, chefs and food scientists, we’ve designed production systems that can operate completely off the grid. Powered by hand cranking, these systems are used to produce a cassava-based porridge called Power Gari – and they do so without electricity while maintaining scale and ensuring food safety. Power Gari has now been produced and sold profitably in Liberia for 3 and a half years, showing what’s possible when low-tech innovations drive women-run businesses. 

Since our early days with entrepreneurs like Sarah in Liberia, Tailored Food has continued to partner with inspiring women across Africa and Latin America to design, launch, and scale nutritious low-cost food products that leverage low-tech production systems. Whether porridge in Liberia, banana-leaf wrapped snack bars in Congo, or spiced soy ‘meat’ in Brazil, we are on a mission to end hunger by 2030. 

It’s also a model where every person in the value chain can be profitable and will continue to make money as the market for locally-grown nutritious food expands. There is no expensive generator fuel to purchase, and no broken equipment that takes months to repair. As it scales, this approach can ensure that everyone, everywhere has access to nutritious, delicious, affordable food. It may not be high-tech, but it is high-impact.

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Taylor Quinn is a youth Act4Food Act4Change leader from Canada. He is the founder and CEO of Tailored Food and currently works for the World Food Programme.

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