What We Do
SPICE Africa program
Beetle Edge, through its, “Scaling for public impacts and communal end-use” i(SPICE) in Africa program aims to provide fresh agricultural and nutritional graduates an opportunity to apply their research, conserve knowledge and gain meaningful experience in the field while contributing to economic development.
We work with African graduates who are willing to volunteer their time to advance the science and practice of scaling for public impacts. Our flagship sector under SPICE is quail commercialization. Quails are versatile and virgin in Africa and involve a simple-short cycle that can offer multiple learning opportunities. Once associate researchers (graduates) master scaling concepts as they scale quail rearing, it would be easy to expand and replicate their experiences into scaling other projects and sectors. In addition quails are a fit-for-the-purpose of advancing agriculture for health and nutrition. In addition, regular consumption of animal products, including eggs, milk and meat is a proven way for attaining food security. For children, consistent consumption ensures normal growth and attainment of full cognitive potential needed for them to excel intellectually when they enter adulthood.
Quails eggs are particularly important because their supply can be consistently guaranteed, over a long time with limited initial capital and within a short time. Quail meat is white meat and its small size is proportionately fit for packing in processed food industry, the feathers serve as pressure absorbents in cushion industry whereas the droppings are proven feeds for other animals, including chicken. Schools offer an opportunity for ensuring food security because they are high population centers for children, where they stay for nine months every year. In many ways, quail egg consumption by children can be accelerated by targeting schools as units of productions. Improved diets of pre-primary, primary and post-primary learners through routine incorporation of high value animal foods can give children a good start in their life. Animal source foods such as quail eggs can reverse nutritional stunting as well as maintain a balanced access to natural micro nutrients throughout learners’ academic trajectories.
Putting sustainability first, quail keeping is a low-cost business that can be adapted for education excellence, meaning that costs can be absorbed within schools’ operational expenses. Moreover, schools serve as protected niches and learning grounds from which the less experimental communities of farmers can be inspired to also rear quails for income.
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