Cassava and Potential Economic Opportunity
Cassava production apparently serves as a staple food reducing risk of famine in places like Nigeria. But these places may be missing out on potential economic opportunities because this staple food that helps people survive in rough areas is also a source for first world products like tapioca. If you can grow it to keep your people alive, with a few extra steps, you can put money in your hands.
I tripped across a video saying Nigeria produces the most cassava in the world and sells very little of it internationally and after that I began looking for clues to what Nigeria would need to increase international sales.
You have two days from harvest to get it processed before it spoils but once it's processed, it's stable for long term storage. Moving the cassava processing plant to where the farms are has a proven track record of helping improve farmer income. Another potential option would be improving the ability of farmers to process it on site to reduce spoilage.
The video cited lack of roads, unreliable vehicles and lack of other basic infrastructure as pain points. Roads and trucks are fundamentally not the best form of shipping goods in most places.
Nigeria may be feeling poor and keeping itself poor because it sees roads and cars or trucks as a symbol of wealth like first world countries have. Reality: First world countries rely heavily on cheaper forms of shipping to get goods to market, like boats and trains.
Historically, rivers were a primary means of shipping goods. That's why it's called shipping: It went by ship. We also use trains as cheaper shipping than trucks but first you need a rail line and that's expensive and a bureaucratic hassle to create from scratch if it doesn't already exist.
Egypt was a strong nation for thousands of years because you floated down river and sailed up river. Prevailing winds ran the other direction from the current, which gave Egypt an easy answer for shipping in either direction long before we created things like steam engines.
Historically, raft or barge were used. You don't necessarily need fancy -- AKA expensive --modern ships to get goods from point A to point B.
Alaska has six times as many pilots per capita as the rest of the US. The state has relatively few roads and relies on ferries, planes, dog sleds and other forms of transit far more than most places.
So a potential means to address one piece of this is find some means to arrange easy, cheap, reliable transit to a sea port or international border and consider low tech answers like a raft on a waterway. Survey local practices and existing resources and consider any means that currently exists that I might not be familiar with. Assess reliability, cost, etc.
If you build a processing plant near the farms or come up with a means for farmers to process the cassava on site so it won't spoil, then have a transportation solution in hand, next you need a marketing solution. In other words you need a means to connect with international buyers.
Ideally, you research both shipping solutions and markets at the same time. If you have three potential destinations and A and B have markets and B and C can be easily reached via raft, B is the obvious answer for your first leg of the project.
If you teach farmers to do it on site, you will need to address quality control issues. Sending it to a processing plant means the plant takes responsibility for quality control and it's easier to be consistent with central processing. But with Nigeria producing so much cassava, cassava spoiling quickly once harvested and Nigeria selling so little of it, high spoilage rates may be a bigger pain point than finding ways to get farmers to reliably meet quality standards.
You need to find solutions that work within real world parameters and one of those parameters is the short time you have following harvest to get it processed. While working towards converting high cassava production into economic opportunity, step one is reduce spoilage and step two is meet quality standards adequate for international sales.
Currently, you have high spoilage. If it doesn't yet meet standards adequate for international shipping, you can at least feed the people locally while working towards selling more in international markets.
Footnotes
I was looking up videos hoping for insights into cassava processing. These are links I kept track of. I likely watched very little of any of this.
Lagos
https://youtu.be/2ZrYwuxThFA?si=mvq0KMrJuw2mKpVS
Cassava processing
https://youtube.com/shorts/MsV2FHhcvT0?si=nK7kAFtN5c3xKMkt
Growing cassava
https://youtu.be/uAQiuge4SWE?si=5BUWqjEOGInHZlsr
Growing Yuca aka cassava
https://youtube.com/shorts/sc5sQPOvkaI?si=D20ro0jvJ9k7K5xT
How to plant cassava in a very simple way
https://youtu.be/9_O-NoSpMGA?si=mofW85hAZVQ4KDuF
How to grow cassava
https://youtu.be/id1mHgLSefI?si=t8vbufVUZKyJlEDy
How to harvest cassava without damaging the plant
https://youtu.be/qqX8uNYu_8Q?si=tT3Fr77R2gzYmpjL
Cassava as a staple
https://youtu.be/jyKPhaZw_0w?si=fTEEJPv6YRWBOPs0
Commercial cassava farming
https://youtu.be/qQ3HsE85TlE?si=m_zX_FtldNkJSGON