Overview

Yolélé Holdings supports smallholder livelihoods in Mali through climate-resilient agriculture. Sustainable African Foods (SAF), a Malian agro-processor, is partnering with Yolélé and the Climate-Resilient Farming Systems Program at Cornell University to develop an integrated value chain and sustainable and regenerative cultivation practices for fonio, an ancient, nutritious, drought-tolerant, West African grain, as the foundation for broad-scale cultivation of indigenous African foods.

This project serves to address the two major challenges to meeting the increasing demand for fonio: low yields and difficulties in processing the grain. The venture plans to promote smallholder capacity building through access to inputs and equipment, provide output finance and logistics support for smallholder sourcing, operate an industrial processing unit in Mali and establish an export and distribution hub in Senegal. The Company has unified production, collection, agriculture processing, distribution, and commercialization across three operating subsidiaries, with impact and commercial scale achieved through mechanization of the heating, decortication, and milling processes. Fonio, and other ancient, underutilized African foods can be grown on poor and shallow soils, in dry climates, and without irrigation; they can alleviate the continent’s reliance on imported wheat, rice, and maize. Yolélé’s smallholder-centric operations will expand cultivated acreage, the by products of which are improved livelihoods, more fertile soil, sequestered carbon, and greater food security.

The Challenge

The West African climate is characterized by low rainfall and increasingly frequent and intense droughts, resulting in widespread agricultural challenges. In order to meet the needs of the region’s growing population, many West African nations such as Mali and Sengal rely on imported grains and cultivation of widely-accessible crops, such as wheat, that are not well-suited for the climate. Recently, there has been a renewed focus on expanding the cultivation of traditional ancient grains from the region in order to meet the demands.
The fonio value chain in West Africa is not currently scalable. Smallholder farmers have low productivity and production due to limited access to inputs. Fonio cultivation through existing methods leads to harvest losses, barren arable soils; poverty, stagnant incomes, and poor nutrition. Furthermore, pre-processing (threshing, winnowing, cleaning, sorting, dehulling) without equipment yields a poor quality of grains. Current price is too high for urban dwellers to consume fonio as staple food, due to low-volume and high processing cost. Mali (and West Africa) suffers from a lack of formal processing units capable of producing grains that meet export standards and at scale; more than 100 small-scale, pre-processors of local cereals use low-volume equipment with poor quality control mechanisms. Poor product quality limits consumer demand. These combined challenges provide little incentive to the smallholder farmer to increase her cultivated area beyond the family’s consumption needs. A massive swath of arable West African land lays fallow.

SCF’s Involvement

1. Potential Investment

SCF plans to invest in Yolélé Holdings Limited, with proceeds further distributed to operating subsidiaries managed by in-country partners: Sustainable African Foods (SAF) (Mali) for smallholder capacity aggregation and post-harvest processing operations; Yolélé West Africa (Senegal) for the construction and operation of a distribution, export, and packaging hub; and Yolélé Foods, Inc. (U.S., Africa, EU) for brand management and CPG distribution.

2. Technical Assistance

SCF is providing support to the project in the form of feasibility studies and an ESIA in order to facilitate the growth of the Fonio market.

The ESIA study of the project will include:

• Identified environmental and social risks of the processing facility in Mali, including stakeholder consultation.
• An Environmental and Social Management Plan (ESMP) to manage risks associated with the project. Policy will also be implemented to promote gender impact.

The feasibility studies of the project will include:

• A lifecycle assessment (LCA) to determine the carbon footprint of Fonio, for comparison with other crops
• A technical and economic review of new regenerative and organic production methods for increasing the yield of fonio grain
• A review to assess the possibility of increasing the fonio planting acreage in Mali

The project described above is only receiving Technical Assistance from SCF at the time of writing.  There can be no guaranty that any investments will be completed or that impact targets will be achieved.