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How promoting consumption of traditional African vegetables affects household nutrition security in Tanzania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2017

Justus Ochieng ,
Victor Afari-Sefa ,
Daniel Karanja ,
Radegunda Kessy ,
Srinivasulu Rajendran  and
Silvest Samali
Justus Ochieng*
Affiliation:
World Vegetable Center, Eastern and Southern Africa, PO Box 10, Duluti, Tengeru, Arusha, Tanzania.
Victor Afari-Sefa
Affiliation:
World Vegetable Center, West and Central Africa, Samanko Research Station, Bamako, Mali.
Daniel Karanja
Affiliation:
CABI, Nairobi, Kenya.
Radegunda Kessy
Affiliation:
World Vegetable Center, Eastern and Southern Africa, PO Box 10, Duluti, Tengeru, Arusha, Tanzania.
Srinivasulu Rajendran
Affiliation:
International Potato Center (CIP), Nairobi, Kenya.
Silvest Samali
Affiliation:
Horticultural Research and Training Institute (HORTI)-Tengeru, Tanzania.
*
*Corresponding author: Justus.ochieng@worldveg.org
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Abstract

Traditional African vegetables have recently received considerable attention for their contribution to food and nutrition security and opportunities for enhancing smallholder livelihoods. Promoting the production and consumption of traditional vegetables is expected to enhance household nutrition among urban and rural households. The Good Seed Initiative (GSI) program promoted production and consumption of nutrient-dense traditional African vegetables in Arusha region in Tanzania to reduce malnutrition through diet diversification. We estimated the impact of promotion activities on households, women, and children's dietary diversity. The study used cross-sectional data from 258 and 242 households in intervention and control regions, respectively, and applied matching techniques and inverse probability weighting to control for unobserved heterogeneity and selection bias, which could otherwise bias the outcome estimates. We found that households benefiting from traditional vegetable promotion and demand creation activities had significantly higher dietary diversity of children under 5 yr and women in reproductive age. We found no significant impact of promotion activities on households’ dietary diversity. The policy implication is that scaling up promotional and demand creation activities to encourage consumers to grow and eat traditional African vegetables would be an important element in initiatives to increase dietary diversity, particularly for children under 5 and women in Tanzania.

Keywords

consumptiontraditional African vegetablesnutritionfarmingchildrenwomen
Type
Research Papers
Information
Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , April 2018 , pp. 105 - 115
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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