An 80-tonne processing capacity factory is creating new markets for 2,250 smallholder contracted farmers in Kisii County rescuing them from a lack of markets.
Kisii County is synonymous with banana production. The county has 6,350 hectares under banana production producing 359,600 tonnes of the fruit annually. According to the county’s former governor James Ongwae, up to 40 per cent of this goes to waste due to a lack of a ready market and poor handling of the easily perishable fruit after harvest. Banana value addition is however increasing the shelf life of the bananas of farmers from 45 wards in the county from days to years by turning ripe bananas into crisps, juice, and raw bananas into gluten-free flour which KALRO says can reduce Kenya’s dependence on wheat flour and maize.
Located in Kisii town, Boka Eats Limited which is run by 36 women began operations in 2022, after it took control of the stalled Sh169M European Union-funded Kisii Banana Factory.
“As an entrepreneur, I saw an opportunity to use what is readily available in our county, and what our people love, bananas, as a substitute to wheat flour to make cheap and nutritious mandzis and chapatis which can be found on supermarket shelves in Kisii Town,” said the company’s Co-Founder Sarah Onchangu.
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The processor turns bananas received from farmers, who are paid more than double the Sh350 they previously earned, from a large bunch of bananas into green banana flour which contains stomach-friendly fibers that work as a prebiotic that is used in making confectionery and is also packaged to sell for making soup and porridge. They also churn ripe bananas into juice, cookies, and crisps which retail for Sh150 for 150 grams, Sh100 for 100 grams, and Sh50 for 50 grams.
“When we first started this project in 2022 we had issues standardising the quality of bananas we received,” explained Boka Eat’s Co-founder Mr. Elias Mabiria. This prompted them to start contracting farmers who grew and supplied bananas to the factory. “Now we take farmers contracted to us through a crash course on the best management practices to avoid them delivering any sickly bananas and we also decide when our farmers should harvest their bananas.”
This he said has greatly improved the lives of the farmers as they can get bank loans with their contracts which are promptly paid directly by the factory. This is similar to the arrangement Kenya Tea Development Agency factories have with tea farmers. ”Our farmers tend to their bananas methodically because the fruit is now their full-time job with assured pay. In time, with good customer reception, we intend to increase our output, and expand our contracted farmers,” Elias said.
Once the bananas are delivered to Boka they are sorted and weighed to determine farmers payment. They are then washed and manually pealed and taken to a cutter which dices it into small chips. The chips are taken through a plunger which treats them to avoid them oxidising and changing colour. The banana is taken into a spinner to remove any water on them and are loaded onto trolleys and dried in one of the factory’s 10 greenhouse dries. The bana chips are milled into banana flour.
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The ‘old man’ of the group who lends his business expertise earned from years in management in the United States to the youth group, said that even operating at full capacity, the plant can only take in less than 10 per cent of the county’s bananas. “This means we have to find a way to make products such as juices which are easy to make Take in a lot of bananas and can be easily stored which you cannot do with riping bananas. Cookies can be stored for more than six months and banana juice for over a year.”
To make banana cookies they add their own milled green banana flour and some wheat because ripe bananas cannot coagulate by themselves.