The people of The Gambia like to start their day with a bowl of porridge, which they call ‘mono’ in their local Mandinga language. But the processed porridge they buy in the market isn’t very nutritious.

Members of a farming cooperative from the village of Jahaur, which is about half way up the country on The Gambia River, attended a training session provided by the Gambian National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) to learn how to make their own ‘fortified’ porridge.

To make the fortified porridge they use four crops, all which are grown locally: maize, pearl millet, cowpea and groundnut. The Institute has given the community seeds of improved climate change resilient varieties of the millet, cowpea and groundnut.

The women learned how to combine a carbohydrate rich cereal crop – the maize and pearl millet – with a high protein legume – the groundnut and cowpea. That provides a form of complementary protein which is highly nutritious.

Complementary protein is combining plant sources, like proteins and carbs, to achieve a better amino acid balance than either would have alone. Because of differences in amino acid make-up, when plant sources are combined, the strengths of one make up for the deficiencies in another. And that means a millet porridge combined with some cowpeas becomes much more nutritious than eating either by itself.

For the better part of the day some women of the cooperative showed me how they learned to make mono. Cleaning, roasting, milling, mixing and packaging.

I got pretty hungry documenting all of those activities but I was rewarded in the end with a tasty bowl of homemade porridge. And I could concur it was not only nutritious but quite delicious!