Giving Compass' Take:

• Yolélé Foods aims to address both hunger and poverty in West Africa through fanio, a local, climate-hearty grain. 

• How can philanthropists encourage local entrepreneurism with multiple social benefits? What role can impact investing play in undertakings like this one? 

• Learn about the benefits of visiting Africa to start impact investing. 

The Co-Founder of Yolélé Foods, Philip Teverow believes the tiny African super-grain fonio will improve West Africa’s economy and landscape. Yolélé Food’s budding two-pronged effort embraces fonio’s potential by encouraging the grain’s use in American diets and creating a less strenuous supply chain for West African smallholder farmers.

What is fonio and what kinds of opportunities do you see with it?

Philip Teverow: Fonio is an ancient grain that has been cultivated for over 5,000 years throughout the West African Sahel – the dry band between the Sahara Desert and Africa’s savannas and forests. Fonio in the field looks like grass, and its seeds are not much bigger than regular grass seed. It thrives in tough conditions where little else survives – poor sandy soil with low rainfall. Although easy to grow, fonio’s small seed size and inedible hull make it very difficult to turn it into food. Fonio is a nutritional powerhouse with three times the protein, fiber, and iron as brown rice.

We look at opportunity in two ways: impact and business. The impact opportunity is to change the economic and physical landscape of Sahelian West Africa, a region whose primary export is refugees, and whose population of 130 million is projected to double by 2050 – at the same time that climate change makes it harder and harder to grow food there. We believe that fonio can play a key role in increasing per capita income by providing smallholders with more cash and generating jobs in agriculture, transport, and processing. We further believe that fonio can help mitigate the effects of climate change when grown in a regenerative system so that it stabilizes soil, staves off desertification, covers more ground with green, and nourishes a growing hungry population.

Read the full article about fonio by Katherine Walla at Food Tank.