During the OCC trip to Kenya last week, we took a break from the hot Kenyan sun with an unusual refreshment: sweet potato juice.

The juice was part of a sweet potato buffet that greeted us at the end of our visit with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and some of its Kenyan partners. The day started with a visit to a satellite center of the Kenya Agriculture Research Institute (KARI). The center has developed new varieties of sweet potatoes to be introduced in the central Rift Valley. The new variety is not only enriched with essential nutrients like Vitamin A, zinc and beta carotene, it’s also resistant to viruses and drought, has a shorter growing season, and a higher yield. In a year where drought has failed Kenya’s maize crop and an estimated 10 million Kenyans are in need of food aid, many farmers raising sweet potatoes have been able to keep their families fed.

The process to reach this point was a long and careful one that involved local farmers at every step. It was farmers in the central Rift Valley that identified sweet potatoes as the first crop to be improved. They felt that sweet potatoes could both enhance their food security and provide extra income if marketed properly to consumers. What they lacked was a type of sweet potato that could fight off viruses and weevils, and also provide key nutrients. With help from AGRA, KARI was able to cross different breeds of sweet potatoes to come up with a variety that met the farmers needs and would be appealing to eventual customers. Throughout the cross-breeding process, local farmers were brought in to vote on everything from color to taste to moistness.

Although the sweet potatoes have been thriving, their long-term impact has yet to be determined. One of the biggest challenges is for farmers to move beyond producing food for their families, marketing the potatoes so they can earn additional income. This is where the sweet potato juice comes in. AGRA and KARI are helping local farmers think through how to make their product attractive to the consumer and brainstorming opportunities to expand the sweet potato value chain: farmers can earn additional income by processing the potatoes into different products, and these enterprises could potentially employ other people in these rural areas.

This is the piece of the puzzle that is central to pulling people out of poverty not only in Kenya, but across Africa. With nearly two-thirds of Africans earning a livelihood from agriculture, projects like these are essential in unlocking the continent’s potential to feed itself and to increasing incomes, both of which help combat poverty. If paired with investments in infrastructure and assistance navigating developed-country markets, investments in crops that can flourish in Africa’s climate, smallholder farmer education, and the development of the agricultural value chain, could help farmers both access and become competitive in local, regional and international markets. In the end, what is simply a sweet potato for us in the United States is the key to a new and prosperous future for Kenyan farmers and their families.

-Nora Coghlan