The COVID-19 pandemic is a multiplier of vulnerability, compounding threats to food security and nutrition (FSN), while exposing weaknesses in food systems. In response, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) developed the Keeping Food Markets Working (KFMW) programme to provide targeted support to help sustain core food systems, workers, and markets during the COVID-19 emergency.
The Commercialisation of Biofortified Crops (CBC) Programme was launched in 2019 to address widespread hidden hunger in Africa and Asia by significantly expanding the reach of foods and food products made with biofortified staple crops.
In low-income countries, poor dietary diversity is driven in large part by the low availability and affordability of nutritious foods like fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy products and other animal sourced foods. In a recent assessment, GAIN determined that small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), or small and mighty enterprises as GAIN likes to call them, produce, process or sell up to 70% of nutritious food sold in low-income markets in Africa.
Vegetables for All (VfA) targets the whole vegetable chain from seed to stomach. In north- eastern Tanzania, the availability of vegetables is intrinsically linked to the dry and wet seasons causing fluctuations in access to nutritious vegetables. This problem is compounded by poor access to high quality seeds and other inputs and high levels of post-harvest loss which prevent vegetables reaching markets in the region.
Food fortification is implemented to increase intakes of specific nutrients in the diet, but contributions of fortified foods to nutrient intakes are rarely quantified.
In 2016, Tanzania put in place a nutrition action plan that would seek to go beyond previous action plans and strategies. The Prime Minister’s Office took the lead in developing a nutrition action plan that not only had ambitious goals and targets but also explicitly called on other sectors to join the country’s fight against malnutrition.
These document series summarise some rapid assessments undertaken by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) to understand early impacts of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic on food systems in a set of low- and middle-income countries where GAIN works (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Nigeria).
These document series summarise some rapid assessments undertaken by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) to understand early impacts of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic on food systems in a set of low- and middle-income countries where GAIN works (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Nigeria).
Fighting malnutrition in all its forms is one of the major challenges of the 21st century. Addressing it will require an agricultural transformation. Within Africa, this must include a focus on small and medium-size farms, which provide about 80% of total calories in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as other small actors along the value chain.
This factsheet highlights the vastly different levels of egg supply seen across African regions, selected African countries, and selected high-income countries. It discusses why eggs remain scarce and expensive in many low-income settings, including across much of Western, Eastern, and Middle Africa.
