This Man Quickened a Slow Cook Nigerian Delicacy 

In each crowded Lagos suburb, there’s a high chance you meet a hawker selling African salad, locally known as Abacha. It’s a popular dish from the Igbo tribe in the Nigerian South East, and to many, it’s a taste of home. But there’s a problem with this meal: it’s highly perishable. This, combined with the tedious food processing of its base ingredient —cassava— repels many of its lovers in the middle class. It takes about two days to make it from scratch. Valentine Okoli decided to solve this problem by creating an ‘instant’ Abacha —a processed form which consumers can prepare in three minutes. This innovation won him the grand prize at Channels TV’s Fund It Forward show in 2023. 

VENTURES AFRICA