Nutrition
Despite significant progress over recent decades, poor nutrition remains a colossal and universal problem, with one in three people on the planet affected by some form of malnutrition.
Malnutrition in Zambia has many causal factors, with poverty obviously being a major driver. Some households simply do not have access to sufficient food (from their own production as well as purchased food) to be able to eat nutritionally dense meals each day. Other households have adequate access to food across the year, but eat a nutritionally poor diet owing to entrenched behaviours. Across both cohorts, diets are predominantly plantbased (especially starchy plants) and proteins and vitamins are not consumed regularly and in sufficient quantities. Zambians consume the highest percentage of maize as a proportion of diet globally.
With financial support from Irish Aid, Musika is working towards achieving increased consumption of a diverse range of nutritious foods including legumes, livestock and fresh fruit and vegetables, among poor households, especially amongst women and children, and within smallholder farming and rural communities.
Through its market-based approach to development, Musika seeks to improve diets and raise levels of nutrition in Zambia through implementing interventions focusing on strengthening the supply chain of nutritious food products, by facilitating beneficial commercial relationships between smallholder producers of nutritious agricultural commodities and food processors.:
The project dubbed; ‘Making Zambia’s Agricultural Markets work for Nutrition’ will be implemented countrywide, but with ‘case study’ districts of Mongu, Mumbwa and Mazabuka between the period 2018 to 2022.
Effort will be directed to the following:
Production – support the increased production, retention and consumption of an increasingly diverse range of nutritious foods throughout the year by smallholder households, especially amongst women and children.
Processing – support the increased capacity of the small and medium scale, rurally based food-processing sector to produce a range of high quality nutritious foods to target the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ food retail market
Distribution – support improvement of the operational capacity of the food-processing sector to create distribution channels for affordable nutritious foods and relevant information back into the rural market.
Musika believes its efforts will result in it building the capacity of the agricultural and food market systems to improve:
• Availability of nutritious foods, pertaining to increased physical access to foods, both on farm and within retail markets in the rural community
• Affordability of nutritious foods, through improving the efficiency of the supply chain from raw material origination to processing to retail, and tailoring products, packaging and distribution channels to serve a ‘bottom of the pyramid’ demand
• Acceptability of nutritious foods, through leveraging the process of product marketing to influence behaviour change towards investment in nutritious foods within rural communities.
The ultimate goal is to increase consumption of a diverse range of nutritious foods among poor Zambians, especially amongst women and children and within smallholder farming and rural communities
