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he month of July was abuzz at COMACO with preparations for the Zambia’s largest agriculture event, the Agricultural and Commercial Society of Zambia (ACSZ) Show. The event was held in Lusaka’s Showgrounds from August 1 to 6, in conjunction with the Farmer’s Day holiday.
For the first time, COMACO and It’s Wild! hosted their own exhibit, which was met with prizes, accolades, and huge crowds.
Read more below to learn about the happenings at the event:
An Infographic Display Wall at COMACO’s Stand at the Agri Show
At this year’s ACSZ Show, we designed our stand to be heavily focused on using infographics to showcase our work and our impact. Infographics allowed us to our information in a visually engaging way in order to attract and inform a large audience at the ACSZ Show. Additionally, infographics helped display our information in an easily understandable way to ACSZ attendees with limited literacy.
Throughout the show, the large 2 by 3 meter infographic of COMACO’s Approach’ was a main attraction. Passersby stopped regularly to take photos of the infographic, and the COMACO staff used the infographic to help able to tell the organisation’s story.
The infographic was designed by Lindsay Olsen, a Masters Student Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, who completed her 8 week Master’s practicum at COMACO.
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Taste test of It’s Wild! new chilli sauces
The team in Chipata has been busy developing It’s Wild!’s newest products – chilli sauce and dried tomatoes. The ACSZ show was the perfect opportunity for our Food Technologists, Carol and David, to test 4 different variations of the chili sauces and 3 different variations of the dried tomatoes to get customer feedback.
The positive feedback on both the chilli sauce and the dried tomatoes was tremendous. People loved the chilli sauce so much, that after sampling they came back to our stand to ask us to add a dollop of chilli sauce to their lunch plates!
Based on feedback from the show, the public is very excited for us to release our chilli sauce and dried tomatoes in the near future.
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COMACO’s groundnut briquettes
As part of our exhibit, we displayed how we press groundnut shells into groundnut briquettes. We use these briquettes to roast our peanuts and we also sell the briquettes from our Chipata location, which can be used by consumers as a renewable charcoal source.
The crowds at the ACSZ Show were abuzz about our inventive briquettes. Even His Excellency, President Edgar Lungu was immensely impressed and interested in our briquette making efforts. Mr. Lungu stated that he avidly supports this sort of innovation, and that he hopes more Zambian engineers will take interest in developing briquette-making machinery within Zambia.
Based on interest in our groundnut briquettes at the show, the COMACO and It’s Wild! team is brainstorming ways to bring the renewable briquettes to the larger consumer market in Zambia.
His Excellency, President Edgar Lungu hears about COMACO’s production of groundnut briquettes
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A section of COMACO’s booth at the ACSZ Show was dedicated to our It’s Wild! products. Here, our Food Technologists and our Sales Directors oversaw huge crowds who were interested in sampling and buying our It’s Wild! Products.
For product sampling, in an effort to be environmentally conscious, we decided to forgo the use of conventional plastic sampling spoons. Rather, we opted to use biodegradable wooden spoons to sample our delicious and all-natural peanut butter.
In all, we gave out more than 40 kilograms of peanut butter samples during the show.
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“It tastes YUMMY!” exclaimed an lively young girl, as she tasted Yummy Soy from the palm of her hand. Throughout the show, we gave out ___# of 100 gram sachets of Yummy Soy. The feedback was unianimous: kids loved the product.
COMACO Food Technologist Carol Mfune even turned the interest in Yummy Soy into a lesson in nutrition for a group of students. The group of students had the opportunity to win a free sample of Yummy Soy for guessing correctly the nutrients found in the product. “Fiber!” they shouted, and Carol would reward the students with 100 gram packets of Yummy Soy.
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Winning Big!
The wonderful ACSZ event culminated in an awards ceremony. We are delighted and honoured to announce that COMACO won a two first place prizes!
Judges assessed the stands at the show based on design, finish, impact, and information.
Richard Mumba accepts COMACO’s first place prize at Agricultural and Commercial Society of Zambia Show
COMACO CEO and Founder, Dale Lewis, says of the award:
“The Agricultural Show is like the Grammys for us. We are so pleased to have won these two 1st place awards against such strong competition. We remain committed to supporting small-scale farmers, improving the environment, and creating Zambia’s best food products under the brand It’s Wild!”
If you would like to know more about the awards or COMACO’s work, please contact, contact Olivia Bell at obell@itswild.org.
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