ONE just returned from a listening and learning trip to Senegal, Ghana, Mozambique and Kenya with members of our board and other supporters. Below is a post from Dr. Regina Kapinga, Program Office at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:

My name is Dr. Regina Kapinga, Program Officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and I oversee the sweet potato grant which covers more than 10 countries in Africa Mozambique inclusive. On Monday 15th March, a delegation from ONE visited this program — the Sweet Potato Action for Security and Health in Africa (SASHA) — a project located about an hour outside of Maputo, Mozambique. SASHA is a sweet potato research project aiming to directly improve the food security of poor families in sub-Saharan Africa with a goal of reaching ten million households in ten years.

In Mozambique, sweet potato is one of the most important traditional food and cash crops. It ranks third in production, after maize and cassava. The government of Mozambique selected sweet potato as one of the most significant crops for mitigating food insecurity and malnutrition among its 21 million people. All sweet potatoes are excellent sources of carbohydrates, fibers, macronutrients, several B vitamins and vitamins C and K. Most importantly, orange-fleshed sweetpotato are also rich in beta-carotene, the precursor of vitamin A. Sweet potato in Africa is widely consumed mainly in rural areas hence the widespread consumption of orange-fleshed sweet potato could significantly reduce vitamin A deficiency, which threatens an estimated 43 million children under age 5 in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Mozambique Vitamin A deficiency accounts for 69% of the total children.

Our program focuses on several components of which three of them include the following: The first and largest component of the program is breeding sweet potato varieties for Africa in Africa. Secondly, we are multiplying the planting material and using innovative methods to distribute them to farmers. The third component is the integration of agriculture and health to impact vitamin A deficiency through the production and consumption of orange-fleshed sweet potato. We are investigating the best ways to scale up these activities in order to ensure that at risk mothers are able to access orange-fleshed sweet potato and feed them to their children.

We are looking for government commitments to be able to scale up and enable farmers even in remote areas to provide calories and vitamins for themselves through a crop that they trust. Right now we are in 14 countries in Africa, but these are small pockets and we want to scale the program out to reach millions of more families.