Transforming Africa's Food Systems

(upbeat music) This is Farms Food Future, a podcast that's good for you, good for the planet and good for farmers, brought to you by the International Fund for Agricultural Development. You ready? I'm ready. Shall we start? - Super ready. - Super ready. - Let's go for it. - Okay. A big three, a huge two and an amazing number one. Welcome to Episode 68. I'm Brian Thompson. - And co-presenting this edition, I'm Michelle Tang. - In this episode, we'll be traveling around eastern Southern Africa to get the inside scoop on innovations to improve food security, healthy diets and sustainable agriculture. And talking about nutrition, we can't forget to mention this year's Sophie Report. - That's right. Released this July, the state of food security and nutrition in the world, better known as the Sophie Report, is an annual report jointly produced by FAO, UNICEF, WFP, WHO and EFAT. - According to the 2024 Sophie Report, hunger is driven by conflict, climate change and economic fluctuations, not a lack of food. The 733 million people who were hungry in 2023 need more than just food. They need a systemic change. We have the means to end hunger by 2030, but we lack the necessary funding and political will. - Small scale farmers who produce a third of the world's food need more investment. It's high time to put our money where our mouth is and invest in achieving zero hunger. - Moving on to our stories. Today, we talk about the innovative behavior change communication techniques that are improving climate resilient crop production and making a real difference in Zimbabwe. - Then we take a look at ways in which we can tackle rural poverty and food insecurity among small holders in Kenya's arid and semi arid lands. And in Malawi, we hear about the vital role of indigenous crops in supporting household economic development. - We'll also be talking about nutrition, education for small holder farmers in Lesotho. Don't forget, we want to hear from you. What do you think about our stories and who you want us to be talking to? So please get in touch with us at [email protected]. You can also subscribe to this podcast via your favorite podcast platform. And please don't forget to rate us. - Coming up, we take a trip to Zimbabwe. (upbeat music) You're listening to Farm's Food Future with me, Brian Thompson and Michelle Tang. In Zimbabwe, food security depends heavily on maize, grown by over 90% of households. Recurrent droughts and worm infestations impact production and even good harvest can lead to low prices and post harvest losses, creating cycles of surplus and scarcity. The AFAD funded small holder irrigation revitalization program aims to improve productivity and climate resilient crop production in the country. Our reporter, Federica Giordani, spoke to Fungai Kuchiaripo, nutrition specialist for the project. - Thank you very much for being here today to attend this knowledge and experience sharing workshop on nutrition sensitive agriculture, rural development and food transformation in Nairobi, Kenya. Would you mind to introduce yourself, madam? - My name is Fungai Kuchiaripo from Zimbabwe. I work for the small holder irrigation revitalization program as the nutrition specialist. - Thank you very much. Let's start now with the first question. What specific nutritional challenges do you aim to address, particularly concerning underutilized species and dietary diversity? - So in Zimbabwe, we have the challenge of chronic malnutrition in the form of stunting. And this is mostly affecting children under fives and the current rate is at 27.4%. And we also have the challenge of hidden hunger or micronutrient deficiencies, which is also affecting the children as well as women of childbearing age, especially issues of anemia and vitamin A deficiency. So with these underutilized species, normally rich in micronutrients. - Thank you very much. Now, could you tell us about the strategies you're using to enhance nutrition, including home garden initiatives to promote dietary diversity and food security? - So mostly the strategies that we employ as a program, they are there to improve availability of food and also dietary diversity at household level. So we formed an SBCC strategy, which is there to create demand for uptake of a diverse and nutritious food. So some of the things that we do under social behavior change communication, we have cooking demos, we distribute labor-saving technologies to women to address issues of labor and then also raise awareness through trainings. And we also promote biofortified crops in the neglected and underutilized species and also the home gardens through QO gardens, which are micro gardens, which do not need much water for survival. We use our gray water or water that have used for other activities like washing, bathing and so forth. - So Anna, the strategy that we're employing as a project is to contribute to food security policy formulation. And we are doing this through policy dialogues, documenting what we are doing and sharing with other partners. These we are doing to create an enabling environment for adoption of good nutrition practices. And lastly, what we are doing as a program, we are participating in the multi-sector coordination platforms at all levels. This way, we meet with different players along the nutrition sensitive value chain and we share lessons and also new approaches to doing things that way. We coordinate efforts towards improving nutrition and also availability of nutritious foods along the markets. Thank you. - Thank you very much. What tangible outcomes or success have you achieved in terms of improving nutrition, especially concerning behavior change towards healthier diets? - Okay, so what we have noted as a program, when we started off, we carried out a baseline survey where we measured the nutrition indicators assessing where they were. And these were the minimum dietary diversity for women to assess diet quality, the household dietary diversity score and so forth. And notable changes have been seen, like the number of households with acceptable diets is at 98 point percent now and women of childbearing age consuming by four more food groups is at 76.8 percent. And with the school program that we've been carrying out to complement the school feeding program, school attendance was reported to have improved and even school performance among learners. And through the youth vocational trainings that we've conducted about 20% of the youth that we trained have managed to open businesses to improve their income. - Thank you, fungi. Next up, we're traveling on to Kenya. You're listening to Farms Food Future with me, Michelle Tang and Brian Thompson. In Kenya, crop production is heavily reliant on rainfall and nearly half of animal production takes place in arid and semi-arid regions. Drought and unpredictable rainfall patterns are severely impacting agricultural productivity among small holders in Kenya's arid and semi-arid lands. - Our reporter, Federica Giordani, spoke to nutrition focal point for IFAD's Serial Enhancement Program, Justin Murioki, about the multi-stakeholder approach they're using. - Good afternoon. What specific nutritional challenges do you aim to address, particularly concerning underutilised species and dietary diversity? - Thank you. K-Sepcrawl is implemented in eight counties in Kenya where we address nutrition challenges. And the greatest nutrition challenge faced in the eight counties is wasting, stunting and underweight. And all these challenges could be addressed easily by using underutilised species and broadening the dietary diversity of the beneficiary farmers. - Thank you very much. Now, could you tell us about the strategies you are using to enhance nutrition, including home garden initiatives to promote dietary diversity and food security? - Thank you. These strategies are adopted by K-Sepcrawl several and the most important of them is a multi-stakeholder approach to developing training modules where stakeholders from each county carried out an analysis of nutrition challenges, building concurrence on the pathways to address the specific challenges so that the interventions would be county context specific. The second approach was the multi-stakeholder training of trainers who include lead farmers. And again, it is county specific integrating local knowledge and the local food sources in the module, especially locally underutilised species that are nutrient dense. Then the team developed training materials, posters in different languages and now carried out training demonstrations including integrated home gardens where different stakeholders brought different approaches to the home garden, some more corn gardens, vertical gardens, braced bed gardens and so on. And K-Sepcrawl invested in water harvesting to support the home gardens using farm bonds. - Thank you very much. Let's move now to the last question. What tangible outcomes or successes have you achieved in terms of improving nutrition, especially concerning behaviour change towards healthier diets? - One of the key achievements for K-Sepcrawl and the multi-stakeholder partnership that has been working together is acceptance of traditional nutrients, dense vegetables in the diets. Presently in our country, you get these vegetables like a jute plant, black nightshade, amaranthus, pumpkin leaves and spiderweeds in supermarkets being sold and they are available in the local vegetable markets. They have also been accepted in the diets in most hotels, including roots and tuber crops, which are currently being offered even in five-star hotels. The second tangible achievement is improvement in the key indicators of our nutrition in the counties I've mentioned. For instance, in Machakos County, wasting reduced from 7% to 4% and the weight reduced from 11% to 8% and starting from 27% to 16% through the Kenya Demographic Household Survey carried out in 2014 and 2022, respectively. - Thank you, Mr. Maruyoki. Our next stop is Malawi. - You're listening to Farm's Food Future with me, Brian Thompson and Michelle Tang. Malawi faces significant challenges with over 70% of its population living below the poverty line. Climate change poses a significant threat to Malawi, causing droughts and floods, which further impact agricultural productivity and food security. IFAD's financial access for rural markets, smallholders and enterprise program aims to support household economic development through access to financial services. Our reporter, Federica, spoke to nutrition specialist Joseph Maulana about the importance of indigenous crops. - In Malawi, one of the main causes of malnutrition is basically the low accessibility but also availability of high nutrient-dense crops. So in the program, we are trying to address the issues of availability but also accessibility, which we've done through the provision of improved seeds. And basically the ones that are already traditionally accepted are the ones that are locally available, but that we've just engaged a local university to make sure that we are distributing the seeds that are now improved in terms of making sure that the production is more so that people can have more available indigenous vegetables within their home state. At the same time, we are doing this through the demonstrations because we cannot distribute the seeds to all the project beneficiaries at once. So what I'm trying to do is to do the demonstrations so that to do the demonstrations that the people could see the importance of growing these indigenous crops. We're also promoting the multiplication of the same rockery because some of these seeds are also available within their garden. So we're also supporting them to source the rockery as part of sustainability. - Thank you very much. Now, could you tell us about the strategies you are using to announce nutrition, including home garden initiatives to promote dietary diversity and food security? - Thank you. So for the, in terms of the home gardening, we are doing this under what we call integrated home state farming. So basically, we are encouraging the project participants to establish a home garden which are within their homes so that they can access the fresh vegetables. But what we've done as innovative now is to develop what we say a communal home garden where a number of women having a common garden where they take care of it in rotation. At the same time, it's bigger than having a smaller garden for individual households. They're also using these as part of, yes, improving the utilization part of the nutrition aspect, but also using these as part of our economic empowerment. So they even sell the surplus of vegetables. And this is kind of a motivation. They are motivated to grow these vegetables because they are setting the surplus, but they're also using part of the vegetables to improve their nutrition needs. - Thank you very much. Let's now move to the last question. What tangible outcomes or successes have you achieved in terms of improving nutrition, especially concerning behavior change towards healthier diets? - Thank you so much. So this program in Manawi, we are working with the Attrapua women. Basically, these are the women who are under the social care transfer. So they are getting some small aspect from the government to support their consumption needs. Unfortunately, the consumption hasn't been concerned about what they eat. So it has been more like buying and eating foods. So what we've done so far is really to train them, educate them on what healthy foods are and how they can combine them and how they can prepare such foods. So it has been so helpful, including their diversity, most specifically for the women as improved. At the beginning, we had around 23% women meeting their minimum daily diversity, but at the follow on study that we've just done in April, we have had up to 40% of the women now that their minimum diversity has been achieved. But at the same time, this is also encouraging us because what we are seeing now is the women on themselves, they are actually now using part of the money which they get from the government even to buy the nutritious foods. Previously, they were not concerned about what they buy. So they're actually using the money to buy nutrition foods from the market. - Thanks, Joseph and Federica. To find out more about Malawi, check out episode 59 of this podcast. Rural Malawians share how they're building back after Cyclone Freddy hit the country last year. - And don't forget to check out our latest episodes. In episode 65, we celebrated the world's indigenous peoples day joined by indigenous leaders from across the globe. Then in episode 66, we spoke to EFAT 2024 gender award-winning projects about their transformative initiatives. - And in episode 67, it was all about food systems featuring Irish youth activist and global citizen award winner Sophie Healey Fow. Stay tuned as we move on to Lizoto. You're listening to Farm's Food Future with me, Brian Thompson and Michelle Tang. In Lizoto, the agricultural sector, especially livestock plays a crucial role involving about 71% of the rural population. EFAT's Small Holder Agricultural Development Project Program aims to support smallholder farmers to exploit opportunities to increase their productivity and diversify into market-orientated agriculture in Lizoto. Our reporter, Federica Giordani, spoke to LeBang Nataki about the importance of nutrition education. - What specific nutritional challenges do you aim to address, particularly concerning underutilised species and dietary diversity? - In our country, the challenges that we want to address in regard to nutrition, first of all, we want to address dietary diversity for the households. And then also, we want to promote biofortified foods and then also diversified household food production. - Thank you very much. Now, could you tell us about the strategies you're using to enhance nutrition? - The strategies that we are using in the country, as first of all, we are using nutrition education and awareness in other people to know about nutrition and nutrition-related issues. The consequences of not eating well and the other thing is that we conduct trainings on household food production, where we are training them on constructing climate smart plots, also the production of fruit trees. And the other thing is that we train them on post-harvest loss technologies so that they can have foodie all year round. Also, introduce income-generating activities so that they can earn money. Also, to empower women to make their own work so that they can have money for the households. - Thank you very much. What tangible outcomes or successes have you achieved in terms of improving nutrition, especially concerning behavior change towards healthier diets? - Thank you. The tangible outcomes or the success stories that we have in the countries are not that much, but we have because we are still facing the challenge of malnutrition. But now, after making the trainings in some parts of the country, some people know how to eat well, know how to prepare food. Also, they know how to practice, hygienic practices. And also, they know how to use the safe and nutritious foods very well so that they cannot lose the nutrients when preparing food. I think we are trying to reduce the impact of malnutrition that is why we said we are training them on those. In other areas, we have nutrition clubs. Those nutrition clubs are the groups of people. We are targeting every person, woman, men, youth to be part of the nutrition clubs so that they gain experience or the skills on nutrition issues. And then, we are trying, encouraging them to have vegetable plots in every household of each member, to have preserved foods, to have fruit trees, to have short cycle animals. Also, to have tippy taps for washing hands every time when they are from, because we don't have enough water in our area. So, also to have the environment clean every time, to maintain hygiene and sanitation everywhere in the house, for the body, everything. So, that is, I think now, our community and some of them adopted these skills. Thanks to Ms Nataki and thanks to our reporter, Federica. You can find out more about IFAD's work on nutrition visiting www.ifad.org/nutrition. And that brings us to the end of this episode. Thanks as always to our producers here in Rome, Francesco Manetti and Joe Matteo Pacchi, and to our reporter, Federica Giordani. But most of all, thanks to you for listening to this episode of "Farm's Food Future," brought to you by the International Fund for Agricultural Development. We'll be back again in just two weeks with an episode on the world's smallest and sometimes forgotten climate warriors. An episode of "70" drops on the last Monday in October, bringing you discoveries of a new bamboo species in Colombia and stories from our forests. [MUSIC PLAYING] This is "Farm's Food Future," a podcast that's good for you, good for the planet, and good for farmers, brought to you by the International Fund for Agricultural Development. You can find out more about all of our stories at www.ifad.org/podcasts. Remember, we want to hear from you what you think about our stories and who you want us to be talking to. So please get in touch at [email protected]. Send us your voice or text messages to this address, and we'll be happy to play you out in the next show. Also, don't forget to subscribe to this podcast via your favorite podcast platform, and please rate us. And once again, we'll be trying to be good for you, good for the planet, and good for the farmers. Until then, from me, Brian Thompson, and the team here at IFAD, thanks for listening.