Stories from Africa: Changing lives through diversified healthy foods showcases FAO’s cross-cutting interventions to deliver better nutrition to communities

05 May 2021, Accra – The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)’s Regional Office for Africa has launched a new publication that showcases FAO’s cross-cutting interventions to deliver better nutrition to communities – from micro-gardens in Senegal to innovative date production techniques in Eritrea, and from raising chickens in Cameroon to promoting nutrition-sensitive agriculture in Rwanda.

A healthy diet of fresh vegetables, proteins and fruit is a key ingredient for eliminating hunger and all forms of malnutrition and achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2 Zero Hunger by 2030. But compared to other regions, Africa faces an affordability crisis for nutritious food.

“Bold actions – in communities, parliaments and internationally – are needed to transform food systems, make healthy diets affordable and drive progress towards the realization of SDG 2,” FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Africa Abebe Haile-Gabriel said in the publication’s foreword.

“These hope-filled stories show that through hard work, innovation and partnerships, ending hunger and all forms of malnutrition is still possible despite the global challenges,”  he said.

Changing lives through diversified healthy foods

In Zimbabwe, family farmers Virginia and Jealous Machimbirike explain in Stories from Africa: Changing lives through diversified healthy foods how being introduced to bio-fortified maize has boosted their incomes and their family’s health. It is part of the Zimbabwe Livelihoods and Food Security Programme which is funded by the United Kingdom and managed by FAO and Palladium, with strategic technical support on biofortification from HarvestPlus.

In Malawi, grandmother and farmer Oida explains how participating in a nutrition-sensitive agriculture project is helping her provide nutritious food to the grandchildren she is raising. She is a participant in the European Union-funded Afikepo project implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development, in partnership with FAO and UNICEF.

In Eritrea, Abdallah explains how he has benefited from an innovative FAO project that has introduced in vitro techniques to propagate date palms, implemented with the Ministry of Agriculture. It means plantlets can be quickly multiplied and then distributed to farmers to grow into productive fruit-bearing trees. “For me, planting one date palm is the same as having a child, it needs my utmost care and input,” Abdallah says.

To read more, download Stories from Africa: Changing lives through diversified healthy foods in English and French.