Scaling Up Cameroon’s Locally Made Baby Food

Kayvey Nutri Foods is fighting early childhood hunger in Cameroon with its affordable, nutritious, locally produced baby food. In Cameroon, nearly 400,000 children from six months to 59 months of age are experiencing or are expected to face acute malnutrition between November 2023 and October 2024 (IPC 2024).

Significant poverty in the country prevents many parents from affording expensive imported baby food. Although some locally made baby food products are available at better prices, they are in short supply due to local crops being prioritized for other uses.

Founded by Fien Rosette in 2016, Kayvey Nutri Foods aims to address these issues with a baby food made from 100% locally grown crops that can be scaled to meet demand throughout Cameroon and beyond, supported by the country’s strategic location in Central Africa, with key ports and infrastructure facilitating regional trade.

As Africa’s most geographically diverse country (often called “Africa in miniature”), Cameroon contains rain forests, grasslands, savannas, deserts, mountains, and volcanoes near black sand beaches, providing another strategic advantage—an ecological range that supports a wide variety of crops from which to choose raw materials.

After researching local ingredient options, Rosette began prototyping in her kitchen, balancing nutrition, palatability, and cost, to develop what would become the base formulation for Kayvey Delight Cereal. Tested and approved by her own children, Delight Cereal is a porridge mix made from soybeans, corn, sesame seeds, Moringa leaves, and stevia.

Soybeans provide a source of complete protein, fiber, and essential omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids, while corn offers a low-cost source of complex carbohydrates. Sesame seeds add flavor, as well as protein, healthy fats, and vitamin E. Moringa leaf, which has been gaining attention for its use as a natural fortificant to alleviate childhood malnutrition in Africa (Sokhela et al. 2023), is rich in micronutrients provitamin A (as beta-carotene), vitamin C, calcium, and iron. Stevia, which has been cultivated in Cameroon (primarily for export) for at least a decade, contributes sweetness for enhanced palatability, without the need for added sugar.

The processing steps for Delight Cereal include roasting the raw materials to inactivate pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms, followed by cooling, mixing, grinding, sieving, filling into foil bags, and packing into pails, allowing for a one-year ambient shelf life.

Since the development of the original formulation, Kayvey Nutri Foods has worked with food scientists, dietitians, and pediatricians to further improve Delight Cereal and has conducted nutrition trials in collaboration with two research institutes: the Ministry of Health’s Centre Pasteur in Cameroon and the Institut Universitaire de Technologie.

Rosette’s involvement in pitch competitions, such as Women Entrepreneurship for Africa and Seedstars, has helped secure funding to buy larger-scale equipment and increase automation for improved production capacity and efficiency.

Kayvey Nutri Foods now distributes its products to hospitals, supermarkets, and other retailers in six regions in Cameroon, reaching more than 11,000 mothers, with new products in the pipeline that include rice and millet baby cereals, as well as soy, corn, and rice flakes. The company’s food safety certification from the Standards and Quality Agency of Cameroon also provides access to markets outside of Cameroon and the ability to sell to the World Food Programme.ft