“I was particularly interested in learning more about African cultures and now, even though I haven’t yet been to Africa, I’ve made many friends in Zambia, Tanzania and Malawi,” said Aashish Mane, business development manager at Bühler.

Originally from India, Aashish started off as a management trainee at Bühler in Austria and recently moved to Switzerland in his current role in their coffee business. Aashish began volunteering in 2021 to use his skills to help African food industry entrepreneurs and has since joined four projects. “I love working with new people who have different experiences, especially small and medium businesses who form the heartbeat of all economies. I also like working with people in the food industry. Partners in Food Solutions lets me do all of that,” said Aashish.

Aashish is currently the client lead for Universal Dairy, a dairy company in Malawi that produces Ultra High Temperature (UHT) milk, yogurt and milk-blended juices. Client leads are ‘project managers’ for clients, ensuring that projects run smoothly and get completed in a timely manner. They oversee project teams, manage timelines and act as a point of contact for the volunteer teams and clients. Through this role, Aashish has developed effective project management and communication skills. “Keeping the project on track and seeing that we achieve our objectives has been my main goal as a client lead. With the tools and experiences that PFS brings to the table, it’s been a great, judgment-free environment to learn and practice new skills,” he said. He also previously served as the client lead for GFP Foods in Tanzania and Sylva Foods in Zambia. He helped Sylva Foods secure a loan to purchase maize milling equipment by preparing a tool to calculate the return on investment of the machinery. “Volunteering with Sylva Foods was one of the most fulfilling experiences for me. It was a pleasure to work with their managing director, Mrs. Sylvia Banda, and I was very happy to see pictures and videos of the equipment running,” Aashish shared.

His message to any of his colleagues who are not sure where to start off with volunteering for PFS? “Just dive into it. It’s easy to get started and the connections you make will be very special. Breaking down the problems the business owners face and helping them find solutions along with other volunteers is a joy!”

The cape gooseberry is a fruit that traces its origins to Chile and Peru but now grows in temperate and tropical regions across the world. It is a round, smooth berry that looks like a miniature tomato and has a bright yellow to orange color. In Kenya, gooseberries grow wild and are typically consumed by villagers who pick them from surrounding bushes and forests.  

In 2019, after attending an agricultural exhibition that focused on underutilized fruits and crops, Viola Maina left her seventeen-year career in media and advertising to set up Gooseberry Delight (GDL), a business focused on the gooseberry value chain from seed propagation to processing. She wanted to transform the perception and potential of the gooseberry; a fruit that had long been neglected in Kenya. Today, GDL makes fruit jams, sauces, and juices and sells fresh and dried berries to supermarkets.  

Gooseberry Delight became a PFS client through the Alliance for Inclusive Nutritious Food Program (AINFP) with USAID and TechnoServe. They asked for help to solve some challenges with their bottled gooseberry fruit juice, which had caused them to withdraw the product from the market. Customers were complaining of bottles of juice ‘swelling up’, as well as issues with taste and separation of the juice. GDL was matched with a pair of volunteers from Cargill and J.M. Smucker Co. to help improve their juice-making process.  

Zahara Sotoudeh, a product developer in pet research and development who currently works on cat food, but who has also worked on jams and jellies, Jif and Uncrustables, joined the project to find a solution. She started volunteering in 2021, following management’s encouragement to employees to do so. Zahara saw PFS as a good path to channel her expertise to help others.  

The volunteer team first assessed GDL’s production process to find out what was causing the problems. They quickly deduced that the excessive heat being used during production - from the hot water used to wash the berries to hot temperatures during pasteurization - was contributing to the poor taste and color. Zahara and her team recommended chlorinated water for washing the berries and reducing the temperature of the pasteurization. They also helped GDL optimize their production by segregating spaces to prevent recontamination and made proposals to improve their recipe, pasteurization, and packaging processes. The team agreed that the sedimentation was more of an issue of consumer preference than a food safety issue and advised them to include instructions to “shake well” on the product’s label. 

Due to this intervention, the gooseberry juice product pulled off shelves is now back on the market. While the juice still has some separation, the bottles no longer swell, and the juice has a significantly better taste and color. The product also has a longer shelf-life. 

Based on the project recommendations, GDL plans to conduct homogenization trials with a homogenizer from an external party in the future. Their goal is to identify the best conditions to ensure that the juice has a smooth, uniform texture and does not separate over time. They will also source new packaging material and try vacuum filling for better results. The whole team enjoyed working together, and Gooseberry Delight is incredibly happy with the results of this project.  

“This is my third project with PFS, and I keep coming back because I love volunteering. I get to learn about products I am not familiar with. It is also a great chance to network and learn from volunteers from other companies you are partnered with. There’s really this great sense of accomplishment knowing that I have been part of a team that has made a difference for another company,” says Zahara. 

Super-volunteer Morgan Patrick is a passionate and enthusiastic innovator who’s always on the lookout for ways we can keep things fresh and future-proof at PFS! She applies these traits too in her role as Innovation and Core Growth R&D Manager at General Mills, where she oversees a portfolio of sweet and salty snacks. Since 2012, she’s volunteered on numerous projects, including leading on-site training and consulting for milling and baking professionals in Ethiopia, and helping PFS staff pioneer new volunteer models in West Africa. 

Joining PFS sparked in her, a passion for learning about different African cultures and histories, which led her to specifically seek out books from and about the continent. Morgan has graciously shared her “fantastically curated reading list with all PFS volunteers! Take a look at her recommendations and be inspired to take on some African reads this summer 

And something for the KIDS!! 

• Kugali – a visual story telling brand using comics, graphic novels, augmented reality (AR) and animation to tell stories about about African mysticism 

• Gizo Gizo by Emily Williamson 

• Dan Auta: An African Tale by Jose Ortega y Gasset 

Valerie Diehl’s focus as a product developer on the research and development team these days is on peanut butter, specifically on the brand Jif. In the twelve years since she joined Smuckers right out of college, she has worked on consumer brands like Uncrustables, Crisco and Eagle Milk and in the natural foods business on beverages, grains, and snacks. This varied experience has always kept things interesting for her at work and is also why she has been a great asset to PFS as a volunteer. Valerie joined her first PFS project with a lemonade producer in 2022 and is currently engaged on another with our client Kokari Coconuts in Nigeria.

As their name suggests, Kokari Coconuts processes coconuts to serve the food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical markets in Nigeria and across Africa. Kokari grows their own coconuts for their processing needs and cultivates sweet potatoes as a cover crop during the coconut off-season. The sweet potatoes are processed into flour for business-to-business sales. However, sweet potato flour is not considered a staple food or typically used as a swallow* in Nigeria. Kokari was looking into additional uses for the flour and considering a sweet potato waffle mix. They reached out to PFS to get expert advice on the best way to develop this waffle mix with desirable sensory characteristics. It was also important to Kokari to have a recipe with a simple ingredient list that is also gluten-free.

Though she had not worked on a product like this before, Valerie has been doing a lot of research and tapping into experience from her days in natural foods where she worked on sweet potato juice and on gluten-free products. She has helped Kokari come up with starting formulas for a waffle mix; proposing a number of ingredient combinations to achieve the perfect sweet potato waffle while keeping the amount of ingredients the consumer will have to add to a minimum. The Kokari team has been very open to recommendations and has run trials which have produced a lovely sweet potato waffle. The project team is currently working on how to improve the appearance, as the sweet potato flour mix browns after preparation. This project has been a wonderful experience for all. “Kokari Coconuts have been phenomenal to work with,” shares Valerie. “We have calls every two weeks to discuss the project and share updates via email in between calls. They have welcomed my suggestions and are willing to try different things, even when I’m not sure that it will work. It’s also been fun interacting with them and learning about their products. It has been a really rewarding experience.”

For Kokari, Valerie’s insights have been a game changer. “Valerie’s expertise has put us on the rightpath and we can’t wait to see what the final outcome will be.” -Kokari Foods

*Swallows are complementary foods that are made from popular staple foods like cassava, wheat, plantain, cocoyam in Nigeria, and are typically served with soups.