With the edge of her wrapper, Bola wiped off beads of sweat running through her forehead. Outside the shade under which she sat with her colleagues, the afternoon sun shone with fury.

Bola had peeled cassava tubers for more than two hours before PREMIUM TIMES’ reporter arrived her mother’s shop in Ilaro, a community in Ogun state, she said.

Together with her younger ones, she explained that she would peel two baskets of cassava tubers before dusk. On two occasions in the past, one of her coworkers had her fingers cut during the activity, she lamented.

“It’s very tedious but once you finish peeling the cassava, the process becomes easier,” she explained, forcing a bland smile, her knife carefully placed by the side of the cassava basket.

She would soon be joined another worker.

Like many communities across Nigeria, the business of cassava processing is widespread among residents and indigenes of Ilaro. While many people process the crop into garri, Nigeria’s popular household food staple, others produce fufu––another delicacy- from it.

Cassava is produced in at least 30 out of the 36 states that make up the Nigerian federation, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

With over 47 million metric tonnes per hectare, Nigeria is regarded as the largest producer of cassava across the globe.

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