DADTCO: Breaking the Commodity Oligopoly

According to John Markesen, CEO of CASSCORP, Africa has yet another hidden treasure, i.e., cassava. CASSCORP has simplified the complexities of large-scale industrial processing—transporting of perishable bulky tubers, high water requirement and pollutants produced—with an innovative mobile processing unit (MobPro), to convert the cassava into cake and later into flour closer to where they are produced. However, it faces difficulties in obtaining a price for the flour that makes the process viable. The flour market in Nigeria was a multibillion-dollar industry, controlled by a cartel of local and multinational companies. While the government has required the millers to mix cassava flour, it is unwilling to ensure that domestic cassava flour producers are compensated adequately by wheat importers. This case study explores CASSCORP’s quest to overcome the wheat flour ‘mafia’ and educate the market to accept home-grown, locally produced cassava flour.