The next time you see a dried mango think of me!

I spent the day working at a centre of mango transformation trying to understand the challenges and difficulties faced by those who make and sell dried mangoes. I pitched into the work load while asking thousands of questions. I sorted and stuffed I’m not sure how many bags each of 100g of dried mangoes that went on to be sealed and will be sold on the local market.

Contrary to what might be believed, selling dried mangoes is not an easy sell. Here dried mangoes are not part of the local regular diet. People don’t really have the habit of buying them as often they don’t have the means in order to splurge like that. One 100g bag of mangoes sells for 200 F CFA which is the same price as a meal of rice with sauce in a restaurant, but the meal fills your belly and the mangoes are just a snack. Also why eat dried mangoes when you can gorge yourself on fresh mangoes when they are in season. People are willing to wait for the next season rather than buying processed mangoes.

So often the dried mangoes are for export, but this also remains tricky. People in Europe, Canada and the US like things to look pretty. They like their dried mangoes to be bright orange and not slightly brown orange. This means, however that we eat the not so ripe mangoes that have been dried as they look nicer, rather than eating the delicious, sweet ripened mangoes that don’t have as pretty a face. The challenge faced by those who process the mangoes is being able to make them pretty, and package them in a way that the consumer abroad will think it is great. The problem here is that shiny, colourful labels are hard to come by and expensive, so most use only black and white printed paper. Based on aesthetics exporters chose mangoes that are accepted and return those that look a little browner. Now comes the challenge of selling the leftovers. A bag of pretty orange dried mangoes goes for 3000F CFA / kg, but the leftovers will go for somewhere around 500 F CFA /kg which then put the producer in a deficit. It’s silly really as I have to say the browner dried mangoes are much more delicious than the orange ones! So here is my little ply to convince you the consumer that brown is better!