Scale-up supply of pre-cooked beans for food and nutrition security by leveraging on public-private partnerships in Kenya and Uganda

This project aimed to develop and promote pre-cooked bean products to increase bean consumption, reduce time spent on cooking and create more lucrative markets for bean farmers.

Beans are an important source of protein, especially for low and middle-income households, but consumption is constrained by the high energy and water requirements for cooking beans and the long cooking time. In recent years, the rapid expansion of urban populations, rising incomes, and high costs of energy have fuelled the demand for fast-cooking processed foods. While canned and frozen beans are available, they are often out of reach for most households due to their high cost and requirement for refrigeration. Developing affordable, convenient, on-the-shelf bean products that require less time, fuel and water to cook, will greatly enhance bean consumption, improve incomes for producers and conserve the environment.

The approach based on the entire value chain of the project involves studying sustainable models intended to:

• increase the production and supply of beans suitable for pre-cooking;
• develop and test precooked bean products; and
• promote precooked beans through innovative public-private partnerships.

This research project is the result of a partnership between Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, and the National Agricultural Research Organization of Uganda.