The Plate:“We chose mangoes because it has among the highest losses, but also because the mango is a very good fruit to sell,” Mattfeld said. “They don’t grow locally in Europe, and the taste is very popular now. But then the question was, how do we save these mangoes?”
Enter a Nairobi company called Azuri Health, which specialized in making porridge. Azuri’s CEO Tei Mukunya seemed an even more unlikely fit for a trans-continental food saving collaboration. Mukunya, 41, didn’t set out to save the world, or even a lot of mangoes. She worked in marketing for British American Tobacco for five years after graduating from university. Yet, after some disillusionment and her father’s subtle suggestion, she transitioned to working on a project that trained local women to produce a porridge made from corn, beans, pumpkin and banana. This “nutriporridge” project, a grassroots program based on rigorous research by the University of Nairobi and Penn State University, was called BASCOT. Mukunya, ever the marketer, changed the name to Azuri, which is “an extract from the Swahili word ‘mzuri,’ meaning something good.”
In 2010, GIZ, the German equivalent of USAID, hired Azuri to help Kenyan mango growers market their products. During this collaboration, Mukunya got the idea of drying mangoes from GIZ. Azuri began drying mangoes using a solar dryer and a local supermarket was interested immediately. That consulting work yielded not just the idea, but also connections to technologically-advanced farmers with hygienic operations—a key in selling dried mango commercially.
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