Bringing noodles to Africa

Farm and Ranch June 30, 2011 Instant noodles have been around since about 1958 but there are still many areas of the world that have not had that much exposure to this popular food. In fact the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service, in cooperation with some U.S. farm groups and international aid groups, is involved in a project to bring nutritionally fortified instant noodles to Africa. The project has a couple of goals.

Baba: “To promote U.S. farm products and second is to fight hunger in the world.”

That is Ahmadou Danpoulo Baba who is the CEO of Imperial foods, a company that is about to open an instant noodle factory in Cameroon, which is on the west coast of central Africa. It will turn out nutritionally fortified noodles for both the general population but also specially made formulations for those with HIV and pregnant mothers and so on. The noodles will be marketed not only in Cameroon but throughout western and central Africa.

The factory will bring one-thousand new jobs to Cameroon but also will help U.S. farmers. Baba says the first production line will use in ten years time;

Baba “100-thousand tons of wheat flour, 10-thousand tons of soy flour and about five-thousand tons of dehydrated potato flour.”

In addition to the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service Baba worked with U.S. Wheat Associates, the North American Millers’ Association and the American Soybean Association.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on Northwest Aginfo Net.