Know your food. Protect your harvest.
Jirigi is a plain-language training course for field workers, extension officers, farmers and market handlers across Africa. Four short modules, no jargon, and a quiz at the end of each one so you know it has landed.
Choose a module
progress is saved on this device🌽 Aflatoxin
The invisible mould poison that costs farmers money and can cost health. What it is, why it matters, and how to keep it out of the harvest.
💧 Pesticides
Using the right amount, at the right time, the right way. Why misuse costs trade, health and money, and what safer practice looks like.
🐟 Fish & Vegetable Farming
How combined fish and vegetable systems work, where the safety risks hide in the shared water, and how to keep both sides of the system clean.
🍅 Clean Produce
How tomatoes and leafy greens pick up bacteria between farm and fork, and the simple hygiene habits that keep produce safe to eat.
Aflatoxin: the poison you cannot see
A quiet fungus that grows on maize and groundnut can produce one of the most dangerous natural poisons known. It has no smell, no taste, and often no visible sign. This module covers what it is, why it matters, and what actually works to keep it out of the food chain.
What aflatoxin actually is
Aflatoxin is not dirt, and it is not a chemical spilled onto food. It is a natural poison made by two small fungi, Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. These fungi live in soil everywhere and grow on crops when conditions are warm and damp, both in the field and after harvest.
The danger is that contaminated maize, groundnut or dried chilli can look, smell and taste completely normal. There is no reliable way to tell by eye. That is exactly why prevention and testing matter more than sorting by appearance alone.
Why it is genuinely dangerous
- Liver damage and cancer: aflatoxin is one of the strongest known natural causes of liver cancer. Repeated low-level exposure over years quietly raises that risk.
- Acute poisoning: eating heavily contaminated food over a short period can cause sudden liver failure. Outbreaks like this have happened in East Africa when badly contaminated maize entered the food supply.
- Child growth: regular exposure in early childhood is linked to stunted growth and a weaker immune system, even with no obvious symptoms at the time.
- Animals too: poultry, pigs and cattle fed contaminated grain grow slower, lay fewer eggs and produce less milk, and the toxin can even pass into milk.
The economic side, not just the health side
Contaminated grain is not only a health problem, it is a livelihood problem. Buyers, mills, feed companies and exporters increasingly test for aflatoxin before they pay. Grain above the legal limit gets rejected on the spot or sold at a much lower price to whoever will still take it.
At national level, this shows up as trade restrictions and closed export markets, since most countries and trading blocs set strict aflatoxin limits in food and feed. For a smallholder, one contaminated batch can wipe out the season's profit.
Prevention that actually works
- Harvest on time: crops left too long in the field, especially after a dry spell followed by rain, are at higher risk.
- Dry quickly, dry properly: moisture is what lets the fungus grow. Getting grain down to a safe moisture level fast is the single biggest lever a farmer controls.
- Sort before storage: remove shrivelled, discoloured, insect-damaged or mouldy kernels. They carry most of the risk.
- Store dry and sealed: hermetic bags, such as PICS bags, keep moisture and pests out without any chemicals.
- Biocontrol in the field: products like Aflasafe, now used in several African countries including Nigeria, spread friendly native strains of the same fungus across the field. These friendly strains crowd out the toxin-producing ones before harvest.
- Breeding for resistance: researchers are developing maize and groundnut varieties that are naturally harder for the fungus to infect, some with the added benefit of higher vitamin E content.
Independent research and regional efforts
Aflatoxin is a well studied problem, and several independent research and development efforts across Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya work on it from different angles. Some focus on breeding resistant crop varieties. Others build collaborative platforms where farmers, researchers, food regulators and processors share what is working, so that good practice does not stay locked inside one lab or one district.
One example is the FS4Africa research initiative, which has supported work connecting aflatoxin management networks in Nigeria and Ghana with crop breeding programmes in Kenya, alongside training modules for value chain actors on cost-effective control practices. Jirigi is an independent training tool and is not produced by or affiliated with that project, but draws on this kind of public, published work as a reference point for good practice.
Pesticides: using them right, not just using them
Pesticides are a normal part of growing grains and vegetables. The problem is not that they exist, it is when they are used at the wrong dose, at the wrong time, or without protection. This module covers what misuse looks like, what it costs, and safer practice that field workers can pass on.
What misuse actually looks like
- Wrong product: using a chemical on a crop it was never approved for.
- Wrong dose: mixing it stronger than the label says, assuming more is better.
- Wrong timing: spraying too close to harvest, ignoring the pre-harvest interval, the minimum waiting time between the last spray and picking the crop.
- No protection: spraying without gloves, a mask or covered skin, and without washing thoroughly afterward.
What it costs
Misuse is not a victimless shortcut. It raises health risk for the person spraying and for the family who eats the produce, since residues do not disappear on their own. Over time, pests exposed to the same chemical too often can develop resistance, meaning the same product stops working, and farmers end up spraying more, more often, for less effect.
Trade is affected too. The European Union placed restrictions on cowpea, a widely grown bean crop, imported from Nigeria after finding pesticide residues above the legal limit. That single trade decision affected exporters and, further down the chain, the farmers who grew the crop.
Safer practice
This combined approach, using several safer methods together rather than reaching for the sprayer first, is often called Integrated Pest Management.
Safe fish and vegetable farming
Growing fish and vegetables together in one recirculating system is an efficient way to produce protein and greens from limited land and water. It also means the same water touches both the fish and the food, so keeping that water clean matters for everyone downstream.
How the system works
A Recirculating Aquaculture System, or RAS, keeps fish in tanks where the water is filtered and reused instead of being discharged. Combine that with a vegetable bed on hydroponics, growing without soil, and the fish waste supplies nutrients the plants need, while the plants help clean the water before it flows back to the fish.
Done well, this closes a loop: less wasted water, less need for chemical fertilizer, and two food products, fish and vegetables, from the same footprint of land.
Where the risk hides
- Shared water, shared risk: if the water carries harmful bacteria or leftover antibiotics, both the fish and the vegetables can carry it forward.
- Antibiotics in sick fish: treating fish disease with antibiotics can leave residues in the water, and eventually in the harvested fish or vegetables, if not managed carefully.
- Raw vegetables: greens from these systems are often eaten raw, so any pathogen in the water has a direct path to the person eating.
Good practice for operators
Clean hands, clean water, clean produce
Tomatoes and leafy greens are some of the most common fresh foods sold in local markets, and also some of the easiest to contaminate between the farm and the plate. This module covers where the risk enters and the simple habits that close the gap.
Where contamination comes from
- Irrigation water: water drawn from rivers or shared sources can carry bacteria, especially where sanitation is poor upstream.
- Hands and tools: hands that touch soil, animals or dirty surfaces pass bacteria straight onto the crop during harvest and packing.
- The ground itself: produce that touches bare soil, especially after rain or near livestock, picks up more risk.
- Crates and containers: unwashed containers carry bacteria from one batch of produce to the next.
Habits that close the gap
Checking the whole chain, not just the end
Rather than only inspecting produce at the point of sale, safety improves most when checks happen at several points along the way: the water source on the farm, hygiene practices during harvest and packing, and conditions at the point of retail. Mobile tools that give smallholders quick access to guidance in the field are increasingly part of this picture, helping put good practice within reach even where formal extension visits are rare.
Settings
What Jirigi is
Jirigi is an independent, plain-language training course built for field workers, extension officers, farmers, cooperative members and market handlers. It covers four practical food safety topics that come up often in day to day work: aflatoxin in grains, safe pesticide use, safe combined fish and vegetable farming, and clean handling of fresh produce like tomatoes and leafy greens.
Where the ideas come from
The content draws on widely published food safety research and practice across Africa, including public work from regional initiatives such as the FS4Africa research programme. Jirigi is not produced by, affiliated with, or endorsed by FS4Africa or any single project. It is an independent effort to put this kind of knowledge into a format that is quick to read and easy to revisit in the field.
Why "Jirigi"
A jirigi is the kind of container people already trust to carry something valuable safely from one place to another. That is the job this course is trying to do with knowledge instead of water or grain.
How to use this course
- Pick a module from the home screen. There is no required order, though Module 1 on aflatoxin is the most detailed if you are starting fresh.
- Read through the module. Each one is short on purpose: what the problem is, why it matters, and what to actually do about it.
- Flip through the flashcards. Tap or click a card to flip it and check the answer, then use the arrows to move to the next one.
- Take the quiz at the end. Answer each question, see the explanation, and get a score at the end with a completion stamp.
- Switch modules any time using the menu at the top, which turns into a simple menu icon on smaller screens.
- Your progress stays on this device. Quiz completion and scores are saved locally in this browser, nothing is sent anywhere.