1) One example of a cultural issue that affects our project is the foods the people in SL eat. The people there have a very particular culture when it comes to food, for example, young boys cannot have bananas as it is believed to disfigure their genitals. Another example is maternal approval. In Sierra Leone, if something new is going to be introduced to a family, it must first be approved by the mothers of the household, so gaining their approval of our product is a must. The last issue that comes to mind is the culture revolving people’s diets in Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone doesn’t have access to the wild variety of food available in the United States, so creating a product that works as a solution to malnutrition is difficult as the food options are limited.
2) I have experienced cultural issues at home as well as in my research of Sierra Leone. Bethlehem has it’s own language when you are in high school here. Something everyone does is call their male friends’ dad and their female friends’ mom. It’s meant to show respect to that person, but it’s a little weird one you call someone dad that isn’t used to being called that. Also, being home reminds me of my Italian heritage, which means lots of sausages, and other meats, but being a vegetarian means that I have to turn down my grandmother’s cooking. This is very frowned upon in my family, and always results in me answering 1,000 questions defending my choices. The last cultural issue that I experience when I’m home is how strict of a household I live in. My parents were both raised under strict parents and they kept that approach when raising my brother and me. This caused issues when I got to Lehigh because that culture made me very calculated and quiet in social situations. A big part of my Lehigh experience has been coming out of my shell and expressing myself.
3) One way that we can use Sierra Leone’s culture to our advantage is their street food. Street foods are a huge market in Sierra Leone and can be compared to the ice cream man for kids in America, but they come around year long instead and instead of ice cream they sell little snacks like fruit, sausage, and bread. These street vendors are incredibly popular and we plan to use that to our advantage. If we can have street vendors sell our product, it will be dispersed to children around Sierra Leone, so we get kids to both eat them, and spread the word. Another thing we can leverage is that maternal approval I mentioned earlier. If we are able to get the mothers onboard with our product, the news of our food will spread through conversations, and once the mothers promote our product, it will be easy to sell them to kids all over Sierra Leone. The last thing we are going to leverage in Sierra Leone is the cheap labor. The average income of someone in Sierra Leone is $2/day, so we will be able to hire skilled workers to make our product for a low cost, which means we can also sell them at a low cost. If we were to try to make them in the U.S. we would run up a high cost from the labor, but the labor cost in Sierra Leone will help us make the product accessible for everyone.
4) Creating this product to be grown, made, and sold in Sierra Leone comes with a set of challenges besides that of culture. The primary food that is consumed in Sierra Leone is rice, which has little to no nutritional value besides calories. Our job is to train the people there to try new things and experience a different side of food, but if humans are anything, they are resistant to change, and this only gets stronger in a place like Africa. Trying to open the people to new food will serve to be a great challenge. Another issue is the lack of large healthcare systems in Sierra Leone. There is only 1 doctor per 50,000 people in SL, so being able to measure the results of our test will prove difficult, as, without a doctor or medical equipment for lab tests, it can be hard to determine whether or not our product is actually making an impact. The last difficulty is the lack of infrastructure. There aren’t many roads like those in the U.S. so transporting goods can tend to be difficult and challenging. This is one aspect of the project we are beginning to look into now.
5) The African context also benefits us in a few ways as well. There isn’t an FDA program that is to the scale of our in the U.S., so it is much easier to bring new products such as ours to the market. This will hopefully allow us to start making an impact on the people there in a quick manner so that those in need can get our help. I mentioned before the street food market that is so prevalent in Sierra Leone. That is another aspect of the African context that will allow us to reach more people in rural areas, compared to the U.S. where we would be fighting for shelf space in stores, and that’s only after we would have to sell the product online at first. It will be much easier to spread our food in villages in Sierra Leone, than a town in the U.S. The last point was also made previously but is such a huge benefit, I had to mention it again. The labor in Sierra Leone is much cheaper than that in the U.S. and will allow us to keep the costs of such a product minimal to ensure that both the producers of our street food and the ones selling it can both be profitable which will encourage them to keep selling our food. This is a key factor in the businnes model of our food, and wouldn’t be possible without the context of Africa.