Healthy, nutritious beans give Kenyan and Ugandan women more
time with their families, thanks to an ACIAR collaboration.
Australia and Canada have invested $AUD2.6 million in a
joint project ‘Precooked beans for food, nutrition and income in Kenya and
Uganda’, a three-year project which ran from October 2014 to March 2017.
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| Photo N Palmer CIAT |
Unprocessed dry beans are a traditional East African
subsistence crop – and provide important protein to poor families. Beans take many hours to cook however, while
most people can’t afford the canned or frozen beans sold in the market.
‘Beans are a very high source of nutrition and protein – but
they take a long time to cook,’ says Mellissa Wood, who ran the Australian
International Food Security Centre. ‘Women
have to spend a long time collecting fire wood to heat them, which makes the
beans expensive, from both the fuel and time perspective. So, sadly, many times the beans don’t make it
into the dinner pot.’
A third to a quarter of under-5s in Kenya and in Uganda have
stunted growth, so adding protein to their diets is very important. ACIAR along with Canada’s International Development Research
Centre (IDRC) have developed pre-cooked beans that women can cook in a quarter
of an hour, making it easier to feed their families and spend more time with
them. They use nutritious, tasty and
attractively coloured beans from the International Centre for Tropical
Agriculture (CIAT).
Local smallholder farmers grow beans under the community
production model, and the beans are then processed in a factory. The project increases smallholder farmers’
income, improves nutrition, and creates jobs in agro-enterprises, especially
for women and youth. More than half of
the 24,000 farmers, for instance, are women.
The project is part of Cultivate Africa’s Future Fund
(Culti-AF), a four-year $15 million program jointly funded by ACIAR and
IDRC. Culti-AF works in ten African
countries (Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda,
Zambia and Zimbabwe) to help local researchers address food security by
improving post-harvest management, linking agriculture to nutrition, and
developing sustainable water systems.
by Nick Fuller
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