Three things low-income consumers taught us about supporting agri-food entrepreneurs in Northern Nigeria

Authors: Valeria Varga, Edwin Kibanya, Patrick Guyer

Can improving a simple snack food help change lives for the better? Fura is a traditional sorghum-based treat in Northern Nigeria. Made at home or at a market stall, Fura balls are served in milk or yoghurt and enjoyed several times a week by consumers. The 2SCALE project worked with women who process and sell Fura balls, to help them use more nutritious ingredients, more hygienic production practices and to create a brand which differentiates them from other Fura purveyors.

This work is part of 2SCALE’s ambition to improve access to nutritious food for at least one million Base-of-the-Pyramid (BoP) consumers. The project does this by supporting businesses across value chains, such as the Fura vendors in the sorghum value chain to reach low-income consumers with nutritious products. While monitoring the number of BoP consumers (reach) is essential, it only tells us part of the story. To understand the change BoP consumers actually experience (and whether they experience any change at all), we believe that we need to look beyond top-down indicators and ask BoP consumers about their own experiences, learning about self-defined impact.

So how does this work in practice? To understand the experiences of Fura buyers, we partnered with 60 Decibels to deploy a short, phone-based survey in the local Hausa language to gather Lean Data insights from the consumers themselves. We aimed to better understand who the typical consumers of Fura balls are, and how (if at all) they felt the changes in production affected them.

The message from these low-income consumers was loud and clear: overall they were highly enthusiastic about the improved product, giving it a sky-high Net Promoter Score of 92 (way above the 60 Decibels global benchmark of 43). More importantly, their responses highlighted three key lessons, for how to most effectively support agri-food entrepreneurs selling to BoP consumers in Northern Nigeria. Here’s what they told us:

1. What matters is how the product makes consumers feel, not how groundbreaking the innovation is

Fura really is a popular snack: almost all the customers we surveyed (280), eat it at least once a week,?and four out of ten of them eat it daily. Our survey of Fura purchasers revealed that good taste and the convenience of being able to find the ready-to-eat Fura in local markets were important product benefits.? But what really jumped out from the results was customer appreciation for the more hygienic production methods - and what they perceive it means for their health and well-being.?

We learned that cleaner production is a difference they truly care about and associate with the brands supported by 2SCALE. Buyers?were asked to describe - in their own words - the changes they experienced. The top responses were better nutrition, feeling more energetic and better health, since switching to the improved Fura.

Graphic: Tasfia Sajjad / Bopinc. Data: 60 Decibels, 2021

The lesson here is quite simple. Taking a familiar product that is already widely consumed and making it safer and healthier may not be the groundbreaking innovation, but it does help create positive change to low-income consumers.

2. Slight improvements to a product can still feel totally transformational

Helping entrepreneurs improve a well-known local product has the benefit of easily reaching low-income consumers with healthier options. This approach does however raise the question of whether consumers really gained access to a new alternative? So, we asked consumers about the availability of alternatives to understand the degree to which the partnership with Fura vendors is providing a scarce or differentiated product. Despite Fura balls being a common delicacy in Nigeria, 74% of buyers said they are accessing improved Fura balls like this for the first time. Furthermore, fully 98% of the buyers said they could not easily find a good alternative to the branded Fura balls. These results suggest that 2SCALE is reaching consumers with a product which is perceived as unique and different - much more so than we expected.

Graphic: Tasfia Sajjad, Bopinc. Data: 60 Decibels, 2021

3. Looking at the depth of impact helps to uncover the diversity of experiences

The 2SCALE project that supported this work with Fura entrepreneurs, has the goal of helping one million BoP consumers to access nutritious food.?While each Fura ball consumer counts towards 2SCALE’s one million goal, we know that behind these numbers about reach, the depth of impact created by access to nutritious food varies for different consumers. Listening to buyer’s voices, helps to uncover just how much of a difference access to more nutritious foods can make for BoP consumers. In our research, four out of five Fura buyers said their quality of life has “very much improved” because of access to improved Fura, which is significantly higher than the 60 Decibels benchmark of 44%.?Yet, the impact wasn't exactly the same for all consumers: the trend in the data was that the more Fura respondents consumed, the greater the impact on their lives was likely to be. Consumers who bought Fura less frequently appreciated the improved product, but were less likely to report positive change in their quality of life.

Graphic: Tasfia Sajjad, Bopinc. Data: 60 Decibels, 2021

On the surface, Fura balls are just a humble, everyday snack. But when we listened to what consumers had to say about improved Fura, it became clear that assisting entrepreneurs to make their product with better ingredients and in hygienic conditions, is having a real and positive impact on people’s lives. Making the effort to listen to what BoP consumers had to tell us, also underlined three important lessons for our work in 2SCALE and similar projects. Simple innovations can make a real difference in people’s lives, a new spin on an old product can look like a totally new alternative to consumers, and listening to BoP consumers describe the depth of the impact of a new product, provides insights to complement standard metrics about sales or consumer reach. Engaging with 60 Decibels helped us to listen to a significant sample of buyers in a streamlined, light-touched way. Moving forward, Bopinc will continue to look for ways to bring out the perspective of low-income consumers, their needs and aspirations - and the actual change they experience.

Look out for future articles, where we’ll share more of the great findings and some details of the methods we used to connect with consumers in Northern Nigeria. Be sure to visit the 2SCALE website to learn more about Bopinc’s work with agri-entrepreneurs in the 2SCALE program, helping connect BoP consumers with better access to nutritious food across 10 African countries.

About 2SCALE

2SCALE is an African incubator and accelerator program that manages a portfolio of public-private partnerships for inclusive business in agri-food sectors and industries. 2SCALE is implemented by a consortium comprising IFDC, Bopinc, and SNV.

About Bopinc

At Bopinc, we believe that the best products should be available, where they matter most. Fulfilling aspirations and needs is key. Through the power of entrepreneurship, every new idea is turned upside down and inside out. Until we find the right innovation, right for low-income communities. From startups to multinationals, we help organisations to design and deliver inclusive, commercially viable business models. Our diverse team of global innovators and entrepreneurs, bridge the gap between private and development sectors.

About 60 Decibels

60 Decibels is a tech-enabled impact performance measurement and management company, working in over 60 countries. Our repeatable, standardised approach to gathering data allows us to collect robust impact indicators and rich customer insights directly from beneficiaries. We also provide benchmarks of impact performance, enabling our clients to understand their impact relative to peers and to make informed decisions regarding how to improve their impact. Our clients include over 500 of the world’s leading impact investors, companies, foundations, corporations, NGOs, and public sector organizations.