A nationwide shortage of sanitizer ingredients means the average consumers have been struggled to purchase alcohol-based sanitizer from supermarkets during the Covid-19 lockdown.
According to the Zambia National Farmers Union, as the coronavirus pandemic hits Africa, cassava flour in Zambia is this year selling for up to 5,000 kwacha ($270) a tonne, a steep rise from less than 2,000-kwacha last year at this time.
Musika, a Zambian agricultural non-profit, noted that over 25,000 farmers in Zambia, majority being women, are now growing particularly drought-tolerant varieties of cassava. This list of farmers includes small-scale farmer, Pamela Nyirenda who shifted to growing drought-hardy cassava in 2019. She has a two-hectare family farm near the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
This year her cassava field has brought not just a secure harvest but also a financial windfall, as buyers snap up the tubers to produce ethanol for alcohol-based hand sanitizer. “This is my second-year cultivating (it) and I have managed 10 tonnes of cassava tubers,” said Nyirenda.
“250 tonnes of cassava flour a day are being turned into ethanol for hand sanitizer and other products sold locally or exported to neighbouring countries in the region,” said Pamela Hamasaka, Head of Corporate Affairs for Musika.
As farmers struggle with longer and more frequent droughts linked to climate change, a growing number of farmers in Zambia and across sub-Saharan Africa are switching to water-saving crops more likely to ensure a harvest, even in poor conditions.
Pamela Hamasaka, Head of Corporate Affairs for Musika, said demand for cassava ethanol has surged in Zambia as companies rush to churn out more hand sanitiser to control the spread of the deadly coronavirus pandemic.”The advent of COVID-19… has pushed the demand for bi-products of ethanol high,” said Hamasaka.
The switch away from staples such as maize and rice to millet, cassava, sorghum and other crops is having multiple payoffs, particularly for farmers who depend solely on rain-fed fields for harvest, said agricultural experts.
