The machines we are working to place in our chapters

Where this standsThese are machines the cooperative is working to place in its chapters. It does not own them yet.

Our president's conviction is that women should not only take part in agriculture as farmers and traders. They should become owners, processors, investors, entrepreneurs and decision-makers across the value chain. These are the three machines the cooperative is working to place.

The groundnut oil press

An oil expeller, a kind of screw press. An auger turning inside a barrel carries the groundnut seed along and crushes it, and the machine gives oil, with the pressed cake as the by-product.

It makes two products from one crop: groundnut oil, and the cake left after pressing.

The palm oil line

Not one machine but a line of them, in the order the fruit needs them.

1. A steriliser and thresher steam the fresh fruit bunches and strip the fruit from them.
2. A digester heats the fruit and breaks down the pulp.
3. A screw press squeezes out the crude palm oil.
4. A clarifier settles and filters the oil, taking out water and impurities.

What comes off the end is crude palm oil. The nuts are left over, and they are where the third machine starts.

The palm kernel cracker and press

The cracker breaks the hard palm nuts and frees the kernels. The press then squeezes the kernels for palm kernel oil, a different oil from palm oil.

In much small-scale processing, the nuts are dried and sold on to other operators, who make the kernel oil. The cracker and press are meant to keep that second product with the woman who processed the fruit.

Why the value should stay with her

In traditional palm oil processing in Africa, women already do much of the processing and the selling. The aim, in the President's request, is that the value stays with the woman who processes.

Written by Women in Agric Business Farmers Cooperatives.