98% of wheat grains consumed in Nigeria as a national staple is imported and with high foreign exchange, it has become increasingly dif�icult to nourish the average family on a humble budget.
The mission: As a seasoned multiple award winning baker and recipe developer at Bourffe Bakeries Ltd, Juliet Aigbe (Chef Juls) extended her curiosity to include backward integration of Millet grains from the source of its value chain to our breakfast tables.
Why Millet?
Millet is a superfood, it is high in all the essential micronutrients the body needs, it is rich in antioxidants and contains 6 times more fibre than 100% wheat based meals. So far, through small holder farmers in Jigawa and other the savannah regions of Nigeria and using Climate Smart Agricultural practices, we are committed to amplifying a farm to fork lifestyle for Nigerian women and children.
Farmers, Millers, Bakers, and Consumers are all actors in a broken value chain. Hence, DGI solves this problem by understanding the farmers needs, helping the millers explore deeply our local grains, urging the bakers to create more local-content options and advocating that more women re-engineer their household’s palates through food safety practices.
Hence, DGI sources millet grains and develops them into a composite trail mix of flours, ball foods for swallows and breakfast cereals.
The possibilities are endless!
Our Work
We’ve produced tons of Millet flour for Bakeries including our own in-house bakery at Bourffe Bakeries Ltd which produces over 200 Millet bread loaves weekly coming to the tune of 10,400 loaves generating over N6.2M of 400g net wt loaves in our little community alone from first launched date on the 26th of August, 2022 to end of the year of 2022.
Imagine the possibilities of other communities join the mission!
We would love to supply millet flour to more bakeries and partner with more key stakeholders including food industry investors all over to help tackle malnutrition and world hunger through our domestic grains initiative. This way, we aim at honouring SDG goal 12, SDG 17, and SDG 2 which is to create a world free of hunger by 2030
Farm to Fork Natural Foods Domestic Grains Mills
The Mill
The journey into milling started from Juliet’s childhood when grandma used a heavy stone attached to her thatched roofed mud house and milled roasted dry corn into fine powder. The meals prepared from the stone-ground corn tasted so good, it created a last impression on Juliet’s child’s mind till date. When it came to millet milling, she attempted milling at a local market, she was horrified at the poor sanitary standards and decided then on to create her own food-grade milling system. Even though it was a humble beginning of fabricated stainless steel with a grinder attached, it brought with it great satisfaction and an excellent output that it became a mission to scale into modern machines that will not violate the integrity of the nutrients while milling the grains.
Fortification
Micronutrients deficiency is a significant public health problem in Africa especially affecting young children, women of reproductive age, and pregnant women.
- So our proposed fortification exercise on millet flour is mandatory by Nigerian law and enforced by nafdac to will help correct and increase daily intake and absorption of preformed retinol to levels sufficiently high to close the existing intake gap and to significantly increase liver stores to correct deficiency and its health and survival implications.
Getting correct information on the process was the agenda at Nutrichem.
