Anne Perera – Food and Nutrition Adviser in Tanzania

What Anne is doing in Arusha

Anne is based in Arusha, working as a Food and Nutrition Adviser for Small Industries Development Organisation (SIDO), a country-wide government organisation supporting small and medium size businesses throughout Tanzania. Her role is mainly focused on providing food processing training to fellow SIDO staff who then train local would-be entrepreneurs to start small food processing businesses.

Making a positive impact

Anne recently ran a Training of Trainers course for SIDO trainers where she identified several new food materials currently being thrown away or fed to animals that could actually be processed to provide another source of food and income. These included orange peel for making candied peel and the blossom and green peel and pith from banana trees for use in nutritious vegetable dishes.

Anne’s highlights so far

 “Together with my husband Conrad (Professor of Food Science at the University of Auckland) who visited me last December, we designed and built an efficient prototype solar dryer to dry the various foods we were processing. It worked really well on the training programme and the dryer has since been displayed at SIDO exhibitions and is creating a lot of demand. My hope is that SIDO will replicate the dryer and make it available to interested parties.” The dryer has attracted interest from other parts of the world as well via my blog (see below).

What Tanzania has taught Anne

“Be flexible. When there are power cuts, work is disrupted and very little can be done so instead of fretting I use the time to do other things such as creative writing and handicraft.”

“Maintaining good relationships with people is more important in the long run than getting the task accomplished at any cost…It may take twice the time but…so what?”

“Being friendly and accepting people for who they are can make one’s own life more pleasant, which is true of any place.”

“I try even harder to live up to my life’s motto: ‘I aspire to inspire before I expire’.”

Stories

Food processing in Tanzania

Published on 9th May 2011

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I started my VSA assignment as Dairy Products Adviser at Small Industries Development Organisation (SIDO) in August 2010. However, soon I realised that dairy was just a minor product in the range of foods that I was advising on. My assignment title has now changed to Food and Nutrition Adviser. Read More

Cooking banana blossom, peel and stem

Published on 21st June 2011

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While on assignment as a Food and Nutrition Adviser with SIDO (Small Industries Development Organisation) I was invited by fellow VSA volunteer Mike Allard to train some of the trainers at his partner organisation, Global Service Corps (GSC), also based in Arusha. Read More

Creating a Food Science Institute in Tanzania

Published on 30th April 2012

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Having been an active Member and a Fellow of both the New Zealand Institute of Food Science & Technology (NZIFST) and Singapore Institute of Food Science & Technology (SIFST), when I arrived in Tanzania on my voluntary assignment, I was looking for an equivalent Tanzanian organisation to join. Read More