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In Benin, parboiled rice production breathes new life into rural communes in the center of the country
Published on: 29/01/2020
Glazoué, Benin, January 28, 2020-Thehustle and bustle of the pretty building opposite the Agouagon train station contrasts with the flat calm of the abandoned railway building. A dozen or so women are busy around an artisanal kiln, pouring pre-cooked unhusked rice into large basins before drying it for several days and transporting it to downtown Glazoué to be husked and sorted. Welcome to the Agouagon women's parboiling cooperative, which is trying to breathe new life into a town in search of dynamism, nearly four hours' drive from Cotonou.
"We set up here in the hope that the train, the nerve center of the village's agricultural activities, would come back," says Cyprienne Dossou, president of the cooperative, stunned by the disuse of the station. "There are 17 of us members, all women farmers, and for the past five years we've been parboiling on a common two-hectare plot, independently of our personal fields. We also buy paddy rice from other producers for processing.
"Before, at least four women had to be mobilized to sort a 100 kg bag by hand, and that took a day, whereas the sorter we've installed has an output of 1.4 tonnes per hour", Bertin Adéossi, Coordinator of the Agricultural Diversification Support Programme.
A highly feminized sector
More nutritious and particularly prized by Nigerian customers, parboiled rice represents an economic opportunity for many women in the region. In the Collines department in central Benin, hundreds of women have specialized in this processing technique to improve their incomes. Gathered within the Union des femmes étuveuses de riz des Collines (UFER-C), they have benefited from the support of the Projet d'appui à la diversification agricole (PADA) and the Projet de productivité agricole en Afrique de l'Ouest (PPAAO) financed by the World Bank. "We received free training in rice parboiling techniques," explains Léontine Batcho, President of the Union. "We also obtained computer and office equipment, mopeds and tricycles to help us develop our business."
Today, UFER-C alone has almost 800 women parboilers in 67 village cooperatives. For Léontine, this trend is set to continue: "The workforce is expanding rapidly, with new members joining the cooperatives on a regular basis. A sign that parboiled rice is on the rise, the husking rate at the Glazoué processing and distribution center has risen from 10% to 35% in two years.
The setting up of a credit system within the Union to help women farmers pre-finance the purchase of paddy rice (unhusked) also explains this success. "UFER-C has enabled us to get organized, pool our efforts and seize opportunities," stresses Odette Agossou, President of the Union communale des femmes étuvuses de riz de Glazoué and UFER-C Board member.
Today, UFER-C alone has almost 800 women parboilers in 67 village cooperatives. Photo: Gnona Afangbedji, World Bank
Better quality rice thanks to more modern facilities
Women rice parboilers in the Collines are particularly proud of the project's installation of an optical sorter to improve rice quality. "It's revolutionized our work," insists Paulin Honaï, manager of the Final Processing and Distribution Center. "The sorter allows us to have perfect rice, with no waste, and to guarantee the quality of our label on the market."
Located at the Glazoué final processing and distribution center, the machine is co-managed by UFER-C and the Union des producteurs de riz des Collines (Uniriz). Most of the paddy rice grown in the department converges on this mini-processing plant to be parboiled and marketed under the Saveur des Collines label.
For Bertin Adéossi, coordinator of the Programme Cadre d'Appui à la Diversification Agricole (PROCAD), this modernization also has the advantage of replacing the tedious manual sorting stage: "Before, we had to mobilize at least four women to sort a 100 kg sack by hand, and that took a day, whereas the sorter we've installed delivers a yield of 1.4 tons per hour, enabling the union to process almost 10 tons of rice per week", he confides.
Production is steadily increasing, rising from 32 tonnes in 2016, to 201 tonnes in 2017 and 303 tonnes in 2018, and should reach 800 tonnes in 2019. This performance is reflected in sales, which rose from 33 million to almost 80 million CFA francs between 2017 and 2018.
The center's next objective? To increase its hulling capacity, which currently covers only 10% of the rice produced in the Collines. "Despite the presence of the optical sorter, we've been having difficulties with our production since the closure of the public rice mill in Glazoué," laments Faustin Assomavè, president of the Union régionale des riziculteurs des Collines (UNIRIZ). "Today, many producers and women parboilers are forced to sell their paddy and parboiled rice to Nigerian traders.
Implemented in four West African countries (Benin, Guinea, Niger and Togo), PPAAO aims to generate and accelerate the adoption of improved technologies in agricultural value chains. In Benin, PPAAO has received $20 million in funding from the International Development Association. By July 2019, some 753,387 producers, 40% of them women, had benefited from direct support from the project.
The center's next objective? To increase its hulling capacity, which currently covers only 10% of the rice produced in the Collines. Photo: Gnona Afangbedji, World Bank
