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Can a blend of black-eyed pea, millet, maize, dried fruit and groundnut paste solve child malnutrition in Senegal?
By George Fominyen
DAKAR (AlertNet) - Could a blend of black-eyed pea (cowpea), millet, maize, dried fruits of the baobab tree and groundnut paste be the solution to child malnutrition in Senegal?
Aissatou Diagne Deme believes so.
She's the director of the Free Work Services factory in Dakar where staff work frantically to turn homegrown cereals, fruits and legumes into flour, juices and pastries for sale.
“This enriched flour we produce provides children with protein from the niebe (black eyed-pea), vitamins and micronutrients from the baobab fruit and groundnut paste,” Deme says.
"Hidden hunger" - a lack of protein and micronutrients - stalk many of Senegal's 12.4 million people. About 17 percent of children below the age of five in the West African country are underweight, while 16 percent of children in this age group suffer from stunting as a result of under-nutrition.
UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Fund, plans to treat more than 20,000 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition this year, particularly in northern and central regions.
Six months ago Deme’s enterprise started supplying the enriched flour to projects aimed at fighting malnutrition in parts of Senegal with high rates of under-nutrition.
“It is a local solution to a major problem based on local crops, grown locally, transformed locally and available at a cost which is not expensive,” Deme said as she supervised the noisy grinding of black-eyed peas at the factory.
The enriched flour costs 50 U.S. cents per pack, and is targeted at children who are four months old and older, and pregnant women.
“Depending on imports for one’s food security and nutrition is a thing that any country that aspires to properly feed its population should banish,” Deme said.
The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) says more than half of Senegal's food requirements are imported annually, including 800,000 metric tons of rice and 300,000 metric tons of wheat.
High food prices in recent years have exacerbated problems of access to food and prompted Senegal’s new president, Macky Sall, to pledge to reduce taxes on imported rice to make what has become the country’s staple more affordable.
Experts say malnutrition in Senegal could be reversed if people diversified their diets to include improved and enriched versions of local foods.
“In many poor rural areas people just eat rice which has become the staple, and feed their children with a pap of cereal that fills them but does not cater for their nutritional needs,” said Aita Sarr Cisse, a nutritionist for Yaajeende.
The project to reduce poverty and under-nutrition in Senegal is run by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
As part of the Yaajeende project, women in parts of Senegal with high rates of under-nutrition are being taught how to produce enriched flour using local crops including maize, millet, black-eyed pea, groundnuts and wild fruits such as those of the baobab tree.
“Our objective is to ensure that every mother of a child who is two years old and below can use what they have harvested from their farms to successfully make a flour that is enriched with nutrients,” Cisse said.
The project also seeks to re-introduce different types of traditional foods that have become unfashionable over the years due to the dominance of rice and millet.
“Some of the things that people used to eat before rice was introduced to everybody were extremely nutritious but now they carry a stigma of being the food of the poor,” said Todd Crosby the deputy director of the Yaajeende project.
Free Work Services’ Deme says her experience of seeing her little business grow to the point where demand is exceeding supply, shows that Senegalese people are happy to return to local foods even if the foods taste different.
“What we lack is political will to ensure that local food crops become the basis of Senegalese food consumption,” Deme said. “We hope that the new president, who has promised to work on agriculture will include processing of local foods in his agenda so that consuming Senegalese food becomes a reality and not remain an empty slogan."
George Fominyen is the Thomson Reuters Foundation's West Africa correspondent based in Senegal. This blog is part of AlertNet’s “Solutions For A Hungry World” story package.
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