The people of Togo eat a lot of bread. But to make bread you need wheat. And Togo doesn’t grow much wheat. It has to import it and Russia is one of the major suppliers.

So the folks at the Institut Togolais de Recherche Agronomique (ITRA) and the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture taught the folks in the village of Atti-Apedokoe how to use flour made out of cassava. Farmers in Togo grow a lot of cassava so its a crop they know. ITRA suggested they try some improved varieties of cassava which are more climate change resilient than the varieties they use now and can tolerate the growing levels of salt in the soils.

Akpakoudo Amah and Akana Akouhad had a go at making bread with cassava. They mixed 50% cassava flour with 50% wheat flour. It’s denser and a bit sweeter than full wheat bread but pretty tasty, at least in my opinion. They’re still experimenting and doing some market research but it does offer promise that they can make bread using ingredients they can grow themselves sustainably and not rely on the fluctuations of global markets.