A tiny-grained cereal and one of Africa's oldest cultivated grains, valued for growing on poor soils where other crops fail.
Fonio or acha (Digitaria exilis, family Poaceae) is an annual grass 30 to 80 cm tall. It has been grown for its tiny edible grain for thousands of years in West Africa, where it is a staple in some areas, known as acha or fundi, and is also regarded as a prestige food, a "chief's food". It is known only in cultivation.
It is grown at sea level in Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone, but more often at 600 to 1,500 metres, with growing-season temperatures of 20 to 30°C. Although it is grown where rainfall is anything from 150 to 3,000 mm a year, most of it is grown where there is 900 to 1,000 mm. It is less drought resistant than pearl millet, but fast-maturing local varieties suit areas with short, unreliable rains. Its great strength is that it grows on poor, shallow, sandy or rocky soils unsuitable for other cereals, though not on saline or heavy soils. Seed is sown where the crop is to grow, barely covered, and germinates in two to four days. Flowering follows six to eight weeks later and the crop matures in two to five months; some varieties give grain only six to eight weeks after sowing, long before other cereals, so they provide food early in the season. Yields are usually 600 to 900 kg per hectare.
Source: Useful Tropical Plants database (Fern, K.).
Considered easy to digest; traditionally given to nursing mothers and people recovering from illness.
Cooked into couscous or porridge; a fast-cooking grain eaten as a staple in the dry season.
Sown on marginal, sandy soils; matures in as little as 6-8 weeks but is labour-intensive to dehusk by hand.