Dessication

Working with Veronica Khoza at Afrenaus Life Skills has been a challnge. Early last year she mentioned that she wanted to establish a fruit and veg drying system for her home carers so that they could carry nutritious products to those suffering from HIV/AIDs and to introduce dried fruit and veg into the township spaza market as a distinct category.

Over December I visisted the South Coast of KwaZulu-Natal and met with some farmers through the Coastals Co-operative there. One family actually has a an under-utilized industrial dessicator!

We have agreed that they will experiment with a variety of locally available fruit and veg including Morogo. In our first meeting of the year at Afrenaus. I will show the the board the samples of dried bananas, paw paw and tomato and see if we can't establish some kind of of supply chain.

In the meantime, Takalani and Moses, two collaborators with Sunstyle will help set-up the fruit and veg drying co-op for Afrenaus and build sun drying racks at the back of the college.
The idea will be to experiemnt with the drying process, package the product and begin to distribute it through the spaza shop network in Mamelodi.

Later when we have built a small market we will go the Pioneer Foods, the owners of SAD, the fruiot drying corporation and get them to supply us with product.