On Tuesday 1st September, 2015, the Institute received the Founder/CEO of Motive International and representative of Global Food Exchange (GFE), Ms. Morgan Keay and her team on collaboration drive to pursue an emergency food security initiative for Nigeria that generates revenue for the parties involved while addressing the problem of food and nutrition security.
The multi-party collaboration involves the following parties:
- Federal Institute of Industrial Research, Oshodi, Nigeria;
- Inter-Heritage Promotions Ltd (IHPL), Nigeria;
- Global Food Exchange (GFE) (USA);
- Motive International (USA); and
- PacMoore (USA).
The specific objectives of the collaboration are:
- To create a suite of high-quality, cost-effective food products that can be stored over long periods and deployed during food crises in Nigeria and beyond.
- To identify and market these food products to primary customer segments (i.e. federal government agencies, donor agencies, major relief organizations).
- To identify and enable spin-off business opportunities for customer segments at the household or business-to-business level.
Soy-ogi, a patented technology developed at the Federal Institute of Industrial Research has been identified as an immediate product that meets the objective of the collaboration.
The approach is to take off with contract production of Soy-ogi with Pacmoore, USA to meet initial order from Federal Government Agencies like NEMA and the general public before Pacmoore begins process of technology transfer to establish processing facility with entire life cycle from sourcing, manufacturing, packaging, and distribution taking place in Nigeria. The final stage will be to pursue export opportunities for emergency food products produced in Nigeria to other regional markets and customers (i.e. World Food Program, USAID, etc.)
Earlier in her opening remark, the Director-General/CEO FIIRO, Dr. (Mrs.) Gloria Elemo, appreciated the representative of GFE and CEO Motive International and her team for the giant strides taken to curb the challenges of global food crisis most especially provision of emergency food in crisis ridden areas across the world.
Dr. Elemo also reiterated FIIRO management’s commitment to put in place effective synergy and linkage between FIIRO and all the partners involved to ensure huge success of the collaboration. She assured that the outcome of the collaboration shall be win-win for all the parties and a big plus for the Global Emergency Food Programme.