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How malnutrition can co-exist with high cereal production
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The paradox of Hauts-Bassins: Produce more to nourish better?
film by Alissia Lourme Ruiz and Eric Maugerard
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Markets, Organizations, Institutions and Stakeholders' StrategiesWomen in Africa: their key role in food security
08/03/2016 - Article
Women play a key role in food security in certain parts of Africa. Cereal production in the western regions of Burkina Faso outstrips the energy requirements of the local population, yet a third of the children in those regions suffer from delayed growth, a sign of chronic malnutrition that is at least partly linked to an unbalanced diet. The economist Alissia Lourme Ruiz has demonstrated that in those regions, within farming households, dietary diversity primarily dépends on whether women are economically and financially independent, rather than on the level of cereal production. A few explanations, in pictures, to mark International Women's Day, 8 March 2016.
In the Hauts Bassins region of southwestern Burkina Faso, cereal production is theoretically sufficient in terms of quantity to cover local people's energy requirements. However, they frequently suffer from micronutrient deficiencies. This is known as "silent hunger".
An insufficiently abundant and/or diverse food supply is one of the three underlying causes of malnutrition, the other two being health and social or care environment.
"Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life."
- World Food Summit, 1996 -
In rural parts of West Africa, people often eat tô, a cereal flour-based paste eaten with a sauce. It is that sauce that gives the dish its taste and nutritional value. Children either eat this family meal or a gruel made by diluting the tô with water, to which the women may add sugar.
Food diversity is very poor. On average, women rarely consume more than three food groups a day. According to international standards, to meet their micronutrient requirements, they should consume between five and ten. Children also consume three food groups a day on average, whereas the recommended figure is between four and seven.
In these rural areas, all the women breastfeed, which health specialists see as a good thing. However, diversification of the diet is an obstacle to their children's development. Foods are sometimes introduced too late on, and are often insufficiently diverse or unsuitable for small children. This type of diet causes delayed growth as a result of malnutrition, or early chronic malnutrition.
That delayed growth has a cumulative effect from six months to two years of age. It is an invisible pathological condition: without regular measurements, it is difficult to detect, particularly in an environment in which a third of all children are small for their age.
Families own a few hectares of land, which generally belong to the husband. In this part of Burkina Faso, men and women play very traditional roles. As regards food, the men manage cereals, store them in grain stores and hand them out to the women as and when required. However, from time to time, some of the cereals they grow have to be sold to raise cash, to pay for their children's schooling or for healthcare if someone in the family falls ill. The women, for their part, are in charge of making sauces.
In their backyards or on the fringes of crop plots, they grow the ingredients required to make sauces (groundnut, okra, sorrel, etc). They also gather leaves (baobab, etc) and seeds (néré for sumbala, etc) to use in cooking.
To generate a small income, the women practise activities that are an extension of their household duties: they sell some of what they produce, some of the wood they cut for cooking, mangoes that they pick, or dolo, the local beer made by fermenting sorghum.
Buying food, preparing meals and feeding children... many domestic tasks, particularly those linked to food, are exclusively down to women. Those tasks are highly physical and above all time-consuming. Alissia Lourme Ruiz's study showed that in this region, gathering firewood for cooking takes two and a half hours on average, and fetching water from the well half an hour.
During the rainy season, from June to November, agricultural work takes precedence and mobilizes the whole family. Most women work in the bush from morning to evening, taking their children under two with them. This means they have less time to make meals and care for their children. Pregnant women sometimes do not have access to a health centre and give birth in the bush.
Certain development projects aim to boost or diversify women's incomes. A microcredit project funded by the World Food Programme (WFP) and Oxfam has been launched in the region. More than 700 women benefit from it. They use the money they borrow to buy cereals, and sell them on when prices rise. The money from those sales enables them to repay the loan and make a profit. This makes them more independent when it comes to buying food, paying school fees and unforeseen healthcare costs.
Some women have also chosen to join forces. For instance, the "Kaora" group, which means "union" or "solidarity", allows the women who produce milk in the village of Koumbia to sell it at a premium, as yoghurt. In particular, pooling their resources has enabled them to buy a refrigerator to store the yoghurt.
For local women, diversifying their family's diet takes time and/or money. However, the researcher observed that because of how families are organized and the roles given to men and women, those women often lack both. As far as she is concerned, a woman's income is one of the keys to ensuring a balanced diet for her family, particularly her small children.
Photos: Vivien Floris, Make2Work
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