Dr. Regina Kapinga, a program officer with our Agricultural Development initiative, shares what she learned on a trip to Africa with members of the ONE board.

In my work at the foundation, I oversee a sweet potato grant that covers more than 10 countries in Africa. On Monday March 15, 2010, a delegation from ONE visited the Sweet Potato Action for Security and Health in Africa (SASHA) program—a project located about an hour outside of Maputo, Mozambique. SASHA is a sweet potato research project that aims to directly improve the food security of poor families in sub-Saharan Africa, with a goal of reaching 10 million households in 10 years.

In Mozambique, sweet potato is one of the most important traditional food and cash crops. It ranks third in production, after maize and cassava. The government of Mozambique selected sweet potato as one of the most significant crops for mitigating food insecurity and malnutrition among its 21 million people. All types of sweet potatoes are excellent sources of carbohydrates, fibers, macronutrients, several B vitamins, and vitamins C and K. Most importantly, orange-fleshed sweet potato is also rich in beta-carotene, the precursor of vitamin A. Sweet potato in Africa is widely consumed in rural areas; hence the widespread consumption of orange-fleshed sweet potato could significantly reduce vitamin A deficiency, which threatens an estimated 43 million children under age 5 in sub-Saharan Africa. In Mozambique, Vitamin A deficiency affects 69 percent of the children.

Our program focuses on several components, of which three of them include the following: The first and largest component of the program is breeding sweet potato varieties for Africa in Africa. Secondly, we are multiplying the planting material and using innovative methods to distribute them to farmers. The third component is the integration of agriculture and health to impact vitamin A deficiency through the production and consumption of orange-fleshed sweet potato. We are investigating the best ways to scale up these activities in order to ensure that at-risk mothers are able to access orange-fleshed sweet potato and feed it to their children.

We are looking for government commitments to be able to scale up and enable farmers even in remote areas to provide calories and vitamins for themselves through a crop that they trust. Right now we are in 14 countries in Africa, but these are small pockets, and we want to scale the program out to reach millions more families.

In this video, Regina talks about the importance of this grantwork: