Demand Rises for Cassava Bread in Tanzania

Support for home-produced commodities has triggered an increased demand for cassava bread in supermarkets in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Cassava Adding Value for Africa Phase II (CAVA II) had been promoting the use of High Quality Cassava Flour as a substitute for imported wheat flour used for baking.

CAVA II, Tanzania took the campaign for the use of HQCF in baking down to bakeries in Dar es Salaam. After a series of baking trials, a few bakeries were confident enough to rollout bread containing 20 percent High Quality Cassava Flour (HQCF).

Frabho Enterprises is an agro processing company at Kiwalani area of Dar es Salaam. The company, which has been involved in agro processing for over eight years, added bakery to its line of business a few months back. The bakery division has been taking the lead in the production of bread with 20 percent HQCF in the city.

“With the price of wheat rising on a daily basis, there was the need to find alternative flour.  We tried using the traditional cassava flour for baking but the result was not good. CAVA II introduced us to farmer groups that produce High Quality Cassava Flour. With CAVA’s help, we got people from Food and Nutrition Centre (TFNC), who trained our workers on how to bake using 20 percent HQCF and the multi-purpose flour,” said the Managing Director of the Company, Mr Julius Wambola.

He added that, “When we started adding HQCF to our bread, we wanted to be sure of the quality so we took the bread to Japan for tests and it passed all the tests. The bread has been in the market for only one month and the demand has been rising steadily. We started with five cartons per day but the demand has risen to 80 cartons per day and now, we supply to different shops in Dar es Salaam including Shoprite. We use 3000 tons of HQCF and we have been getting regular supply. Bread made with 20 percent HQCF is preferred to the one made with regular flour. The price of cassava bread is also more than white bread in Dar es Salaam.”

While Frabho Enterprises gets busy in order to keep up with the demand of cassava bread, CAVA II, Tanzania is taking the campaign for HQCF inclusion beyond the baking and confectioner industries in the city of Dar es Salaam.