IITA launches a groundbreaking project in Ghana.

The project’s overall objective is to improve the livelihoods of smallholder chicken, fish, pig, and vegetable producers and other value chain actors and contribute to improved urban sanitation and mitigate climate change. In addition to that, the project seeks to understand the current and future stream of biowaste to inform the design of a business model for sustainable biowaste management animal feed and organic fertilizer production, it will also establish chicken and fish feed organic fertilizer value chains, optimize the potential of BSF biowaste processing and build capacities of the BSF knowhow of youth agripreneurs and stakeholders. The Research for Development Director, Dr May Gury, Saethre in her address at the launch stated that Chicken and fish farming are among the most rapidly expanding private sectors in African agriculture and the industry is currently based on the traditional animal feed sources namely soyabean, wild fish and maize meal. She stated that the rapid growth of this private sector also globally demands increased efforts to find alternative feed sources, competitive in price and quantity without occupying additional agricultural land. She added that in West Africa, a large amount of biowaste is generated in urban markets, particularly in fruit and vegetable markets. Products produced by slaughterhouses are often underutilized and generate additional waste sources. Municipalities governing waste disposal struggle to deal with the urban cities’ current waste level in a sustainable way. As a result, biowastes accumulate in open and unregulated sites creating unsanitary environmental conditions that pose public health risks and contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As a solution to those challenges, the IITA BBEST project will turn vegetables, fruits, and slaughterhouse waste into chicken and fish feeds and organic fertilizer using the Black Soldier Fly BSF larvae. This will further generate multiple benefits: economic benefits, a clean environment job creation, and empowerment of youth and women at many spatial layers: household, urban city, and peri-urban landscape. Participants during the launching of the IITA BBEST Project in Ghana.