Chad: Drying mangoes - A simple way to help address malnutrition

“Everywhere you go in our village, you find hundreds of mango trees that produce fruit four months per year,” says Pauline Tideita, a widow and mother of five children, who lives near the city of Doba, Chad. “We would eat the fruit when it was ripe or just sell them at a throw-away price because we did not know how to keep them for a longer period of time.

“Mangoes are our main resource here, yet we continue to face food shortages every year because of too little or too much rain,” she continues. “This happens generally around June when all the mangoes have been sold out or have rotted because of the hot climate that announces the beginning of the rainy season.”

Three years ago, World Vision started training women in the area on how to dry mangoes. The goal was to make sure that the extra mangoes that couldn’t be eaten or sold quickly by households don’t go to waste.

“We have tried to focus our efforts toward bringing new agricultural techniques to put an end to the recurring food shortage in the region," says Irene Tolkoi, World Vision's programme manager in the area. “We selected dynamic groups of women and sent them to Doba to be trained on mango conservation techniques and today we are happy that there is a significant change,” says Tolkoi.

One of those groups is named “Djara-koo”, which means “Let us give it a try” in the local language. In March 2008, the 15 members of the group attended a training with a local consultant on mango drying techniques. World Vision then provided them with the necessary equipment to give the techniques a try for themselves.

“We used to slice mango, but we did not follow hygienic procedures,” says Marie Rose Ndolitah, the general secretary of the group. “[Now] our dried mango meets quality requirements and is sold in Doba at a very good price. We earned 100,000 francs after the sale of 100 kg of dried mangoes in 2008.” She adds that their earnings doubled in 2009 and they hope to produce more this year.

The income earned from selling the dried mangoes helps the group members' families avoid food shortages since they now have money to buy bags of rice. Ndolitah says the women don’t sell all the dried mangoes they produce. “We make sure that we keep some in the house to use with groundnuts [peanuts] paste to prepare a sauce for the children."