Frank Thoya, founding father of Samaki Biscuits (left) and Ngumbao Kazungu, pastry chef (proper), getting ready elements for making fish cookies. Picture: Velma Pamela, fowl story company
By Velma Pamela, fowl story company
Issues regarded unhealthy for Frank Thoya when the occasion planner misplaced his revenue and have become a shark meat vendor. However that led to an ‘aha’ second that has since develop into a win-win for him and his group.
A scrumptious scent of baking fills the air, making its manner down the road in a semi-industrial space of Kilifi County on the Kenyan coast. Frank Thoya is busy baking his fish cookies.
“I wished to create one thing helpful, inexpensive, and wholesome,” Thoya says, sitting in his small manufacturing unit, which is the centre of his efforts to make dietary meals accessible to everybody.
Thoya’s efforts started after the COVID-19 outbreak flipped his whole world. Earlier than 2020, Thoya labored as an occasion planner, specializing in birthday events, weddings, and different features. Nevertheless, his once-thriving enterprise got here to a halt as social gatherings had been prohibited because of the nationwide lockdown.
In an try to regulate, Thoya began promoting dried shark meat. He thought it was a smart resolution that might assist folks stockpile meals throughout lockdowns as a result of shark meat has a protracted shelf life.
Nevertheless, the enterprise quickly encountered difficulties. When the provision of shark meat dried up attributable to over-fishing, Thoya needed to abandon the enterprise. There was additionally the difficulty of the meat’s overwhelming stench.
“I bear in mind strolling house in the future, and a few women joked that I smelled of shark. It was actually powerful,” he says with fun.
Nevertheless, a door then opened. Whereas searching for a sustainable enterprise thought, Thoya got here throughout Kilifi County’s malnutrition information. In response to the information, pregnant ladies and kids below 5 within the area had been experiencing important dietary deficits.
This info was a revelation. Thoya started methods to fight malnutrition with accessible assets in his space. He investigated the well being benefits of fruit and cassava. Then he remembered his experiences with fish and commenced talking with specialists and nutritionists. He started experimenting with a baked concoction of all three elements. He settled on a cookie resolution – one thing that might be palatable to youngsters in addition to adults.
After months of trial and error, Samaki Biscuits was born – a simple, fairly priced snack made to supply probably the most vitamins with the fewest elements.
“These biscuits are excessive in important nutritional vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids, and protein. Cassava offers you vitality, fish aids with mind progress, and fruits provide you with pure sweetness and important minerals. It’s a well-rounded resolution with every chew,” Thoya notes.
A neighborhood pastry chef got here throughout Thoya’s effort and was then impressed to affix the enterprise. Recognising Samaki Biscuits’ potential, Ngumbao Kazungu determined to affix the trigger, providing his culinary expertise to assist refine and enhance the manufacturing of those nutrient-dense cookies.
Recent fish is cleaned, dried, and pounded into a skinny powder. The fish powder is mixed with cassava flour, a significant crop in Kilifi County.
So as to add style and vitamins, fruits like pineapples, mangoes, and bananas are both dried and processed into powder or combined right into a puree.
“We mix every little thing – fish, cassava, and fruits – in exact quantities. A little bit water and butter maintain all of it collectively, and generally we add icing sugar for sweetness,” Kazungu says.
Fish cookies on show at Frank Thoya’s workplace. Picture: Velma Pamela, fowl story company
After that, the combination is shaped into cookies and cooked for 45 minutes to an hour at a regulated temperature. This offers the baked outcome a crunch whereas preserving the vitamin. To additional protect their lifespan and freshness, they’re positioned in hermetic packing after cooling, able to be offered over-the-counter.
Pwani College, situated in Kilifi County, examined the biscuits in its lab and located them to be a workable resolution to a difficult downside, in accordance with Professor Jofrey Kashindi, a researcher within the college’s Analysis and Extension Division.
“This mission integrates all the important thing worth chains of this county – fruits, fish, and cassava. We hope to hold out further analysis to seek out further advantages these cookies would possibly supply past what we already know,” Kashindi says.
Past higher well being, the group has additionally benefited from the introduction of Samaki Biscuits in different methods. Thoya purchases fruits and cassava from close by farmers, selling sustainable livelihoods for small-scale farmers in Kilifi.
Moreover, native fishermen have one other dependable marketplace for their catch, rising their income and decreasing waste.
“It’s a win-win state of affairs. Along with addressing dietary points, we’re constructing the native economic system,” Thoya explains.
Thoya continues to come across difficulties regardless of Samaki Biscuits’ reputation. Funding is a significant impediment that restricts the scope of manufacturing and distribution.
Whereas Samaki Biscuits stays a cottage business for now, Thoya has greater goals. He intends to extend manufacturing, kind alliances with close by academic establishments and medical services, and broaden distribution exterior of Kilifi County.
“That is my mission, not simply my work,” he stated. “I wish to display that main issues could also be solved with out the necessity for giant equipment or opulent factories.”
/fowl story company