By Dr Myriam Sidibe and Jane Nelson
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, Oct 29 2018 (IPS)

Food is an increasingly hot topic, no matter if you are rich or poor. Malnutrition – including undernutrition, overweight and obesity – affects 1 in 3 people around the world.

When it comes to the link between health and nutrition, consumers in both developed and emerging economies are facing high social and economic costs of being malnourished. While governments must take the lead in tackling malnutrition, this situation presents untapped commercial opportunities to develop new products and market-based solutions to deliver more nutritious foods. As people and policymakers wise up to the importance of eating a varied and healthy diet, an increasing number of commercial enterprises are springing up to satisfy this growing demand. It is in this context that over 200 experts recently gathered at the Nutrition Africa Investment Forum in Nairobi. The forum offered a platform for fresh ideas to develop the food value chain and to mobilize private sector investment and innovation to enhance nutrition in Africa.

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are widely acknowledged as key to the economic development of Africa. This is just as true for their role in the nutritional development of the continent. SMEs, with more agile business models and capability for nimble strategy pivots, are essential in driving the innovation needed to stimulate greater variety in diets. As they look to expand operations in Africa, more established corporations must take note of this. The smart ones are already partnering with and investing in smaller, more innovative companies, transforming nutrition on the continent in the process. There is an essential role for both large and small companies in creating the change that is needed.

Multinationals and SMEs must expand their collaboration beyond food production, packaging and processing. The next step should be towards dramatically increasing consumer demand for more nutritious and sustainable foods, facilitating a shift in the entire food system. Big brands have the ability to make nutritious foods that are better for the planet and to increase demand and accessibility. Nutritious food products made by big brands that are classified as ‘processed’ can enable people all over the world to cook delicious, healthy meals in a short amount of time for a relatively small amount of money. This empowers household cooks to expand the variety of meals they create, which is good for the health of people and our planet.

Changing consumer tastes are critical to the direction our food system will evolve towards. Diversified diets improve human health and benefit the environment through varied production systems that encourage more sustainable use of resources and greater biodiversity. Global brands have the power to lead a movement to affect this change, through their billions of consumers. Knorr, for example, is in the homes of 2.8 billion people around the world. This presents a huge opportunity to impact diets globally. The brand has serious influence in agriculture too, buying over 333,000 tonnes of vegetables and herbs every year, much of this from thousands of smallholder farmers.

Locally, these brands can influence tastes to improve nutrition. Royco, for example, is the local brand of Knorr in Kenya. Having earned a reputation for enriching the flavour of meals, Royco now has the reach and credibility to change consumer behaviour around what people eat and how they cook. These are notoriously difficult habits to change.

Royco’s Green Food Steps behaviour change programme inspires household cooks to add green leafy vegetables alongside iron fortified cubes to common dishes, ensuring they still taste as good as before. The programme was launched in Nigeria, where one in two women of reproductive age suffer from anaemia. It has made a small change with a huge potential impact to get millions of households to adopt this simple behaviour to increase their iron intake. Partners including Christian Aid, Amref and Well Being Foundation have adopted the programme and the messages to impact more households in rural areas. To date, the programme has reached over 20 million people in Nigeria and aims to reach a further 20 million. In Kenya, the target is Five million.

An evaluation of this program conducted in collaboration with University of Gent, Belgium, and University of Ibadan, Nigeria, revealed that over 40 percent of participants changed their behaviour, adding leafy greens and iron fortified cubes to their dishes. This and similar initiatives can make a significant impact on the intake of iron and the overall nutritional value of staple meals. It offers a clear example of how a brand can use its reach and influence to change the way people cook and eat for the better, using marketing resources and know-how to improve public health.

The Green Food Steps programme is just one example of how big brands can change people’s relationships with food and create a positive impact on society and the environment. Bold players leading ambitious movements that improve how people eat and experience their food will shape the future of African nutrition. With this in mind, investors at the look-out for those organisations with the ambitions and commercial potential to create the systemic change that our continent is hungry for.

The Harvard Kennedy School recently published a report focused on unlocking greater commercial investment into value chains that can improve access to nutritious foods among low-income consumers in developing markets.

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Eunice, an expectant mother in Migori County in Kenya. Photo Credit: Lifebuoy

By Dr Myriam Sidibe and Siddharth Chatterjee
Migori County, Kenya, Jun 24 2016 (IPS)

For twenty-six year old Eunice from Migori County,Kenya, celebrating her daughter Sherry’s fifth birthday is a milestone that few of her friends have enjoyed. As with many areas of Africa, a child born in Migori is seven times more likely to die before the age of five, compared to a child in Europe.

Despite recent gains in improving maternal and child survival rates in Africa, the continent still rates the lowest in the world. In Kenya, child mortality stands at 52 per 1000 live births and more than 6000 mothers die every year giving birth

For many mothers like Eunice, the survival of a baby is often a hit or miss , four in ten newborn babies die within the first 28 days of life. These first days are when newborns are highly susceptible to infections such as pneumonia, diarrhoea and septicaemia, which require hospital treatment or intensive care in severe cases.

With almost one third of women in Kenya giving birth away from health facilities, it is easy to see how the odds of survival are poor. Due to different factors such as infrastructure and culture, many mothers opt to deliver their babies in less than hygienic conditions.

The same factors that drive child deaths around the country are similarly keeping maternal mortality rates high in counties like Migori. A recent survey by The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and partners showed that Migori is one of only six counties responsible for about half of Kenya’s maternal mortality burden.

A remarkably sad fact is that many of these deaths could be prevented by the simple intervention of providing proper hygiene facilities. According to statistics, nearly 1,000 children die each day due to preventable water and sanitation-related diarrhoeal diseases.

Just getting a child to reach five years has been associated with overall improved child survival rates, and this is why corporates like Lifebuoy have moved to inspire the simple life-saving habit of handwashing with soap.

Lifebuoy has released their latest Help a Child Reach 5 film which will be broadcast in Migori as part of the campaign to raise awareness on the importance of handwashing with soap, a habit that experts have called ‘the world’s best vaccine’.

The data on this highly affordable habit cannot be more astounding. According to the 2014 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS), only three in ten households in the country have a place for hand washing. In western Kenya where Migori County is located, this figure is even lower.

Combining this practice with low cost interventions such as immunisation, family planning, delivery under skilled care, early initiation of and exclusive breastfeeding and umbilical cord care are promising solutions that can reduce up to 70 percent of newborn deaths.

A report by several partners including the World Health Organisation, UNICEF and UNFPA recently called for better coordination between those promoting water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programmes and the maternal health sector. It is a message that must continue to be advocated not only to mothers, but also to those in health care who handle mothers and infants.

More than 150 years ago, a Swiss doctor Ignasz Semmelweiss found that poor hand hygiene of healthcare providers correlated with an increase in postpartum infections among mothers. Studies that are more recent have shown that simply handwashing with soap during critical occasions in new born care can reduce new born deaths by up to 44 percent.

Handwashing with soap offers protection against pandemic flu, SARS, trachoma and parasitic worm infections. It keeps children in school and reduces infections that mothers and babies may contract during delivery and postnatal care. AIDS patients who wash their hands with soap regularly report significantly less cases of diarrhoea.

Access to good hygiene, including handwashing with soap, is an important indicator in the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The fact is that there is a lot of ground to be covered, not only in households but also in our health facilities. A WHO report last year for instance found that 38% of healthcare facilities in 54 low-income countries are without a decent water source.

It is time to begin seeing the provision of clean water and sanitation not only as delivery of hygiene infrastructure, but also as an essential part of infection prevention and therefore a simple way to improve quality of care for mothers and newborns.

The First Lady of Kenya, Her Excellency Margaret Kenyatta, launched the ‘Beyond Zero Campaign’ to improve health outcomes for mothers and babies in Kenya. UNFPA Kenya called on government officials, donors and civil society partners to commit resources towards improving maternal and newborn care in the country. However, the challenge remains: how do counties in Kenya implement measures on a large scale?

It therefore calls for effective partnerships between central governments, local governments NGOs and the private sector. Such strategic public-private partnerships will enable the governments to tap into the expertise and efficiencies offered by the private sector.

There are numerous collateral gains from improved maternal and child survival rates, not least being the confidence for parents that pregnancy and childbirth is not a gamble with the life of the mother or baby.

It will mean that girls like Sherry can be joined by many of their peers in celebrating their fifth birthdays, looking forward to joining school, to making many friends, and to growing up healthy and happy.

After all, this is what all parents would wish for their children.

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