Increasing Senegal's Harvest with Grain Tools

Six communities in rural Senegal are about to have an opportunity to change their lives. They will be the first to receive CTI’s new grain processing tools—a set of hand-operated devices that can dramatically increase farmers’ yields and incomes.

Pearl millet is a nutritious cereal grain that grows in some of Africa’s most famine-prone regions. In West Africa, women and girls harvest and process pearl millet, working each day from dawn until dusk to produce enough food for the evening meal. 

With access to only rudimentary tools like a mortar and pestle, women and girls barely produce enough food to feed their families and much of their crop blows away in the wind or is dropped in the dirt. 

No one should go hungry because they don't have the right tools.

CTI has developed a set of manually-operated grain tools that significantly increase farmers’ pearl millet yields in a fraction of the processing time—overcoming a major barrier to economic development for women and girls.

The set of tools include a grain stripper, thresher and winnower that: 

• Produces grain 10x faster than traditional methods
• Captures more than 90% of farmers’ grain
• Increases farmers’ incomes

The National Cooperative Business Association will introduce the tools to six pearl millet growing villages in Senegal as part of a USAID Farmer-to-Farmer program.