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Bridget Ebunoluwa Adeyanju, a Nigerian food scientist and lecturer at Adeyemi Federal University of Education, Ondo, is pioneering a model that could reshape the nutritional landscape and economic prospects of rural communities in South-West Nigeria.
Through a decade of research and hands-on community engagement, she has developed what she calls “Community-Based Snack Processing Models,” designed to transform traditional snacks into healthier, more profitable products for the women who produce them.
Her work emerged from years of studying the chemistry and processing of indigenous foods, first at FUTA and later at the University of Ibadan. By 2016, she began exploring how familiar snacks such as kokoro, aadun, kulikuli, and moi-moi could become nutrient-dense alternatives using blends of maize, beans, soybeans, moringa, and local spices. Her findings showed that incorporating as little as 20 percent legume flour could significantly increase protein, iron, and zinc, nutrients often lacking in children and pregnant women.
“I wanted to prove that our local snacks are not just cultural symbols, they can be engines of nutrition and income if we process them the right way,” she said.
Determined not to let her findings remain confined to academic journals, Dr. Adeyanju moved her research into rural communities. Between 2017 and 2019, she established small snack-processing hubs across Ondo, Osun, and Ekiti States in partnership with women’s cooperatives, churches, and farming associations. Each hub operates like a micro food industry where women produce composite flours using village mills and solar dryers, then process them into fortified snacks ready for markets, schools, and kiosks. What began with a handful of women using old frying pans in Ondo town has grown into structured enterprises equipped with modern processors and packaging sealers.
The economic impact has been significant. Many women who previously earned barely enough from selling snacks on street corners now operate as small-scale entrepreneurs supplying shops and schools.
For Adeyanju, empowering women is central to transforming food systems. “In most rural homes, women control food,” she said. “If you improve their knowledge and income, you feed the entire community.” Her approach also aligns with national priorities, offering solutions to malnutrition, rural unemployment, and Nigeria’s heavy reliance on imported wheat. By promoting composite flours made from maize, beans, and sorghum, she argues, Nigeria can reduce its billions of naira wheat import bill while supporting local agriculture.
Her work blends culture and science in ways that communities can embrace. Rather than introducing foreign foods, she strengthens snacks people already trust.
“The goal is not to replace kokoro and aadun with foreign biscuits,” she said. “It is to make them worthy of school feeding programmes and supermarkets.” Her research involves sensory testing in schools, nutrient analysis using AOAC standards, shelf-life improvements through solar drying, and business skills training for women.
Despite skepticism from some villagers and challenges such as unreliable electricity and limited access to equipment, she persisted, often using personal funds or collaborating with NGOs and churches to support the women. By early 2024, more than 120 women had benefitted from her training, and discussions were underway to integrate the model into state school feeding programmes and NYSC community projects.
“If this model is scaled, Nigeria can build a snack industry run by women, powered by science, and sustained by local farms,” she said. Her work demonstrates that innovation can emerge from local knowledge, simple tools, and a commitment to turning tradition into opportunity.
