Décembre 13, 2018

Breaking cultural barriers in fura processing and marketing in northern Nigeria

Kwame Ntim Pipim & John Paul Chime

The sorghum pilot with the Funtua community in northern Nigeria is aimed at breaking the cultural barriers of Fura processing and marketing by the local Fulani. The replication of this pilot should support the informal group of Fura processors in the Funtua community. Fura is an indigenous dish of a ball formed from sorghum dough. The pilot which is still on-going has already made significant progress in the area of a new approach adoption by Fulani Women.

2SCALE wanted to tackle the challenges of local Fura processing and marketing by replicating the success strategy of the Sorghum and Millet in the Sahel (SMS) pilot in Jigawa, Nigeria. However, this strategy failed in practice and learned that every context is different and asks for adaptation. Due to cultural and religious barriers, the Funtua women processors of Katsina state were not allowed by their husbands to sell their product on the market. Instead, their children were selling the product. This meant that our plans to actively engage the indigenes' women in the marketing activities got stalled. Faced with this situation, we built a new distribution model targeting Fulani (women) Fura sellers, which focused on changing behaviours. In this model, we also included male grocery sellers as marketers as it was still perceived as difficult to change and adopt new and hygienic innovations by the Fulani women. However, a common and big challenge amongst both channels (Fulani women and male grocery shops) was a lack of hygiene.

The Breakthrough Introduced

To implement the distribution model, we held a series of behavioural change and business training on improved marketing and fundamental hygiene in food processing and handling for the Fulani women and male grocery owners. This training helped women to identify what is right and how to attain that in terms of food processing hygiene and point of sales branding with respect to potential consumer perceptions. The next major step, which proved to be the breakthrough in this iterative pilot process, was the selection of Fulani women as “Change Agents”. Four Change Agents were recruited by the Fura processing group based on their enthusiasm and active attitude during the training. The Change Agents became the key drivers for several targeted promotions towards consumers and for penetration into the Fulani communities to influence other women to become involved as well. The change agents, in turn, recruited 16 other Fulani sellers. The recruited sellers received the same intensive training to enable them to adopt the innovation and best practices in Fura processing and marketing.

In addition, 2SCALE involved a senior male official from the federal government, that was well trusted within the community. He was involved to convince the husbands of the Fulani women that taking up a role as Fura sales agents was a good way forward. His involvement was a strong driver for the rapid expansion of the Fura women sales agent network.

The results and next steps

The Fulani sellers have embraced the new model of sales of Fura and through 2SCALE were able to double their sales. Together with other 2SCALE activities, such as improved hygienic production practices and more appealing marketing materials, which were supplied to 25 sellers and 6 retail outlets. This pilot in 2SCALE has not only lead to an increase in the sales of Fura, but also in the development of new and rewarding jobs for 45 women from the local Fulani community.

Share this update: