Flourmasters
Bühler’s African Milling School is now five years old! In that time, 150 millers have graduated from the two-year apprenticeship program, where they balanced theoretical and practical training to become experts of their trade. Though the coronavirus put a damper on its anniversary celebrations, it led to the creation of new courses.
Joel Bedetti, March 25, 2021
In January 2020, Stefan Lutz returned to Nairobi, Kenya to take up his new position as Managing Director of the African Milling School (AMS). It was a sort of homecoming for him, as he was part of the teaching team when the school welcomed its inaugural class in 2015. He even developed the syllabus and textbooks for the vocational program together with his predecessor, Martin Schlauri. In 2017, Lutz left AMS to take up the position as Bühler’s as Head of Technology in South America.
Back in Kenya’s capital in 2020, Lutz was looking forward to the year ahead. He had big plans to expand the school’s course offerings beyond the two-year courses. The coronavirus thwarted his plans. In March, less than a week after the 28 second-year apprenticeship students from 17 countries had arrived, Lutz had to make the difficult decision to send them all back home – just in time as it turned out. Because the next day, Kenya imposed a lockdown and closed its borders. “Everyone made it home safely,” says Lutz. “The next question was: What are we going to do now?”
The AMS was founded to increase grain processing know-how in Africa and the Middle East. “We want to train professionals from the region for the region, and thereby reduce dependence on foreign specialists,” explains Heiko Feuring, Head of Middle East and Africa at Bühler. “The school is therefore open to all companies – regardless of whether they are customers of Bühler.”
The AMS program is based on the Central European vocational training system and fills a gap in the African school system when it comes to this trade. “In our industry, only a few people study at universities,” Lutz explains. “Learning by doing is how most millers learn their profession.”
Lutz regularly sees the consequences of a lack of professional training in the industry, namely machine downtimes due to lack of maintenance and inefficient grain processing with yield and performance losses. “From 100 kilograms of wheat, 77 to 78 kilograms of flour can be obtained with optimum use of technology,” explains Lutz. “If the quota is only 70 kilograms, this has a huge impact on a mill with a daily production of 2,000 tons.”
The school is open to all companies – regardless of whether they are customers of Bühler.
Heiko Feuring,
Head of Middle East & Africa at Bühler
Before AMS opened in 2015, the instructor team formulated the syllabus of the Swiss milling apprenticeship program into English, the language of instruction at the AMS. The goal was to offer training that is both well founded and practice oriented in the newly constructed building that would house a school mill, a laboratory with a bakery, and two classrooms. When the very first class began its two-year apprenticeship, a few challenges emerged. “The students were between 23 and 45 years old and at very different levels of knowledge,” Lutz recalls. “Finding the right balance was quite a task.”
In addition to instructing in English, the school also offered tailormade trainings in French, Arabic and now Portuguese – three common languages in Africa and the Middle East. Until recently, the two-year apprenticeship at the AMS was split into six modules, each consisting of one month of classroom instruction, in between which the students would apply their newly acquired knowledge in their companies.
Our trainees are also responsible for maintaining the highest standards of quality and hygiene.
Stefan Lutz,
Managing Director of the African Milling School
During classes at the AMS, theory is studied in the classroom in the morning; in the afternoon, that knowledge is applied in the school mill, the workshop or the laboratory. The program covers the path of the grain from cultivation to consumption. If, for example, proper storage is a core topic in the first module, the training continues from correctly operating machinery all the way to laboratory work. “There, for example, the trainees learn how to detect toxins produced by molds, such as aflatoxin in corn grains,” explains Lutz. “After all, our trainees are also responsible for maintaining the highest standards of quality and hygiene.” The program is completed with baking bread in the school bakery, since the prospective millers should know how their customers work.
To date, around 150 apprentices have completed the two-year training program. Luciana Wambugha is one of them. She graduated in 2018. The trained laboratory assistant works in a mill in Eldoret in western Kenya and attended the AMS as part of a traineeship. “The start of the program was particularly exciting,” Wambugha recalls. “After only a short time, we got to know how grain cleaning machines work, how to maintain them and how to adjust them properly.”
Wambugha and a colleague from the mill where she works, were the only women in the 2017-2018 class, and this fact spurred her on to excel in the program. “I wanted to prove to some skeptical male colleagues that I can do this as a woman,” she says. She did that by finishing second in her class, and her colleague third.
“Our mill in Eldoret was very satisfied with us,” says Wambugha, who was promoted to shift supervisor after graduating. “Thanks to my initiative, we now maintain our machines systematically and regularly.”
Wambugha is especially proud of the fact that, due to her training at the AMS, the flour quality in the company has greatly improved. For example, a sample in the laboratory revealed a gluten content that was too low, and this was elevated by modifying the wheat blend. “Sales are better now,” explains Wambugha. “Our customers are satisfied.”
When the lessons in March 2020 fell victim to the coronavirus pandemic, Lutz decided to reduce the number of attendance modules from six to four in the future. He and his five team members began developing e-learning content that learners could access via smartphone. “But this move only enables them to acquire basic knowledge,” says Lutz. “The practical training and final touches must take place on-site.” This way, the attendance modules should be more intensive, and the students should spend more time in the school mill and in the lab.
The AMS therefore quickly began to prepare for teaching in the new normal. Dispensers with hand sanitizer, regular disinfection of the premises, and temperature checks at the entrance are now part of the daily routine.
When the lockdown was loosened and Kenya reopened its borders and schools, the AMS was able to hold the second and final module of a head miller course that had started in January 2020.
And, the second-year apprenticeship students, who had to leave in March in a hurry, will make up for their missed modules in a six-week intensive course starting in February 2021. In order to adhere to social distancing guidelines, the class will be taught on the more spacious upper floor of the school mill and the classrooms will be ventilated regularly. The lunch break in the cafeteria will take place in two shifts. “It will be a demanding time for the students,” says Lutz. “But this way they can still complete their apprenticeship.”
As the pandemic might cause travel restrictions for a longer period of time, Lutz has focused the offer of the African Milling School more strongly on the home market of Kenya. “We also have a coffee roasting machine and brewing equipment on the school property, so we’ve designed courses lasting several days on the topic of coffee roasting and beer brewing. The coronavirus crisis caused us to re-think, and we now offer more courses in other production areas,” he says. Next year, the AMS will start a course for feed millers with three one-month teaching modules. The aim is to teach students how to professionally process bran, a by-product of wheat, into animal feed using pellet mills. “We had the idea for this for quite some time,” says Lutz. “However, due to the ongoing miller and head miller classes, we never had time to turn it into reality.”
Including all of the short courses, the school director estimates that in the past five years, around 1,000 people have graduated from the AMS. Thanks to its many modern process technologies, the school has also become a valued partner for local grain producers, especially when it comes to developing advanced processing methods.
The AMS also offers flour analyses and advice on quality improvement, for example when a miller receives complaints from customers.
“Over the past five years, the AMS has become more than a school,” Lutz explains. “Today it is a knowledge pool and application center, and we provide solutions for the food industry on the African continent and in the Middle East.”
Gupfenstrasse 5
Uzwil
9240
Switzerland
