Abstract

Rural residents of Malawi dehull maize at home by laborious pounding with a mortar and pestle, and then have it ground into flour at a nearby hammer mill. The domestic pounding of sorghum is even more time-consuming, and is viewed as the major obstacle to sustained or increased planting of sorghum in the drier areas. The purpose of this project is to develop a plan for the spread of grain dehullers in rural areas of the country. Researchers will test four dehullers under village management in maize and in sorghum-growing areas; evaluate the performance of existing Engleberg dehullers in two maize-growing areas; develop local skills on processing machinery; and identify local manufacturing skills for dehuller production.

Post-Project Summary

Two mini-dehullers and two larger Botswana Rural Industries Innovation Centre (RIIC) dehullers were installed at existing hammer milling operations at four sites. The viability of the dehuller at one site was severely affected by food relief being distributed to refugees in the immediate vicinity; the dehuller at the second site was underutilized. The dehullers at the remaining two sites became economically viable after 24 months operation. Of particular interest was the dehullers' ability to process the soft high-yielding dent maize and brown coated sorghum varieties that were difficult to dehull using a mortar and pestle. Evaluation of the Engleberg dehuskers in two maize-growing areas was hampered by the reluctance of the owners to share detailed information. Interviews with women customers, however indicated that the dry abrasive dehullers had an advantage over the Engleberg dehuskers (which operate on moistened maize) in that the process did not reduce the product's storage life. Also, the dry abrasive dehullers were less expensive that the Engleberg dehuskers. A large, well-established local firm was selected to manufacture one abrasive dehuller. Work toward developing a national strategy for delivering appropriate dehulling technologies to rural Malawi continued in a second phase.

Recipient Institution(s)