To prevent malnutrition among young children and strengthen the role of women in their communities, Misereor, together with the local non-governmental organisation CEBEDES , is implementing a programme on integrated home gardens in Benin - a series of pictures.
Women farmers apply the knowledge they have learned about nutritionally sensitive agriculture. Photo: Klaus Wohlmann
Benin is a country with a population of ten million, almost half of which still lives in rural areas. It is reasonable to think that village life is a guarantee of good nutrition as there is the space to cultivate the land and keep animals. But in reality, poverty is more prevalent and malnutrition is a bigger problem in rural than urban areas. In south Benin, the farms are very small – how can five or six people feed themselves from two or three hectares? In central Benin, the farms are slightly larger, but rainfall is unpredictable and the villages are frequently cut off from the outside world.
Photo of a village in Ouinhi with a few houses and a housewife washing bowls. Rainwater is collected in large clay pots under the roofs. Photo: CEBEDES
A third of children between 6 and 59 months shows signs of delayed growth: Repeated nutritional stress and the delay in treating illnesses causes a child’s body to adjust to these conditions by reducing the growth speed. Delayed growth is the visible symptom but this stress often has other effects on a child’s abilities.
Before signs of delayed growth appear in children, they suffer from episodes of acute emaciation (significant weight loss). According to the report on the implementation of a government nutrition project in 2016, the percentage of acute malnutrition among the intervention areas is 2.7 per cent in Ouinhi, 4.2 per cent in Zè and 3.6 per cent in Ouèssè. Acute malnutrition can be quickly identified in children between 6 and 59 months by measuring the circumference of their upper arm (red = acute emaciation).
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Pascaline Tononongbe’s experience
Pascaline Tononongbe is 38 years old, married and a mother of 4 children. She lives in the village of Zè, around 50 kilometres away from the capital city, where she has only been once in her life due to her limited funds. She never went to school. She stayed at home to help her parents in the field and to take care of her new-born siblings. When she grew up, she married farmer Benjamin Awede who inherited only one hectare and leased one hectare. The household has to sell part of its harvested maize, manioc and beans in order to cover the necessary costs for education, health, kerosene for the lamps, soap, salt and repairs on the houses. The rest is barely enough to feed the family for a few months; as a result, the quality of the sauces that accompany their staple food, as well as the amount and number of meals gradually reduce.
One day, Pascaline Tononongbe meets a field adviser from the non-governmental organisation CEBEDES, who comes to Pascaline’s village every month to weigh the small children. She recommends that she and the other women in the village add plenty of fresh vegetables, meat and fish to their diet in order to improve the family’s health by consuming more nutritious meals. However, this would prove difficult: She and many others in the village have only grown a few vegetables and do not keep animals. CEBEDES therefore suggested opening a teaching garden, where the techniques for cultivating a fruit and vegetable garden and keeping small animals can be taught and practiced. Pascaline and her husband were glad to take part in the project.
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Breeding of giant snails in the school gardens of the Ouinhi and Zè communes. Photo: CEBEDES
The program of integrated garden allotments
MISEREOR supports the non-governmental organisation CEBEDES so that a technician can run and look after around 15 learning gardens with 15 to 25 participants each year. For one year, they cultivate an agro-ecological garden and learn all of the proven techniques such as composting, selecting species, making and using biopesticides, collecting rain to water the gardens and learning about mulch. Mostly iron-rich leafy vegetables are grown as they are used in traditional cuisine but some gardeners are also happy to try new vegetables. Each teaching garden selects at least one species of animal for breeding: Poultry in simple barns (normally they run around freely), giant snails or catfish in small ponds.
After no more than a year of training, the participants are given help to set up their own garden. 507 individual gardens and 45 school gardens in three communities have been set up after two years.
Snails are traditionally collected in wetlands in the bush and catfish are caught in rivers and ponds. These species are resilient. Researchers and producers have learned how to domesticate them and simple methods for keeping them are available. The number of snails and fish produced can be easily distributed so that the costs are covered by the earnings. Part of the production goes towards feeding one’s own family however.
Breeding of catfish in the school gardens of the Ouinhi and Zè communes. Photo: CEBEDES
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Sébastienne Tolokin's experience
Sébastienne Tolokin tells us her experiences. “Last year, I took part in the training courses offered in the teaching garden in Lokossa in the Ouèssè commune. We learned a lot about agro-ecological horticulture and breeding chickens and snails. The harvest from the teaching gardens were used for cooking classes for the mothers of children in the village during the nutrition education courses and were also sold to support the members who has completed their training to set up their own garden.
I was also looking for a space for my own garden, which my father-in-law gave to me in the end. My husband helped me to build a fence around it with oil palm branches. I have dug 15 beds and grown a variety of vegetables. I use the harvest from my garden to prepare a variety of nutritious meals for my family and sometimes leftovers are sold. The income from this is used to help my husband cover the needs of our children in terms of education, health and buying staple foods. The garden is excellent because it has improved both the quality and the quantity of the food for my household and has made me happier. Next year, I am planning to expand my garden.
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Women are weeding their fields, which they have planted with legumes (Niebe + Goussi) to improve the soil quality. Photo: Klaus Wohlmann
The work of CEBEDES in allotments has also piqued the interest of the communal services. They are informed every quarter of the programme’s progress. In addition, CEBEDES organises field visits for the agricultural services and social and health services. This allows the pilot project to be replicated and expanded. The mayor of the commune Ouèssè is delighted with the approach to tackle malnutrition in his community and says: CEBEDES started providing nutrition education by giving nutrition advice to pregnant women and young mothers with children between 0 and 59 months old.
Since 2018, the non-governmental organisation’s integrated family garden project has been covering the need to provide certain foods for advising the communes. The consumption of fruit and vegetables and other animal products that the field advisers recommend for good nutrition during the nutrition education classes is not easy for the communes to implement as our rural households are poor and these foods are not available all year round.
CEBEDES supports households by educating them about agro-ecological issues and breeding small numbers of fish, poultry and snails. We visited the gardens several times and talked with the beneficiaries. We have seen satisfactory results and can only welcome and support this approach by making land that belongs to the commune available to women, so that they can expand their farms and the women who find it difficult to access land can also benefit from the fruits of the garden. We will continue to monitor the gardens that have been built with the agricultural services so that we can continue this work at the end of the project.
A gardener in her own garden. Photo: CEBEDES
CEBEDES aims to transition into standard operation after the current pilot phase. The developed approach enables farmers to begin producing vegetables with little investment. The gardens can be gradually expanded and include keeping small animal such as improved chicken farming and breeding fish and snails. The project technicians write technical data sheets and handbooks based on their experiences with the gardeners. These materials will be used this year to train other interested non-governmental organisations and operators so that CEBEDES’s approach can also be used more widely in other communes, for example in addition to the national nutrition education programmes.
Misereor is the Catholic charity for developmental cooperation. Together with local partners, Misereor supports people in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
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A contribution by Roselyn Korleh and M. Sahr Nouwah (WHH)
The Liberian town of Kinjor is a picture-book example for what happens, if land rights aren’t protected, and it illustrates how to move forward from there. The keyword: Multi-Actor Partnership
It began with clicks at a trade fair and ends with concrete reforestation: a campaign at the Green Week in Berlin is now enriching the forests of the Yen Bai Province in Vietnam. A chronicle of an education about climatic relevance to concrete action - and about the short distances on our planet.
A contribution by Dr. Kathleen Mar and Dr. Nicole de Paula
Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, health is receiving unprecedented public and political attention. Yet the fact that climate change is also affecting the environmental and social determinants of health in a profound and far-reaching way deserves further recognition.
In the tropics rainforests are still being felled for the production of palm oil, meat and furniture. It is high time to act. Proposals are on the table.
In this article, the author describes what we know about interlinkages, what role agriculture has to play in the sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity, and what the necessary changes in agricultural systems might look like, both on small and large-scale farms.
"One World no Hunger" (SEWOH) becomes one of the five core themes of the BMZ. Dirk Schattschneider, SEWOH Commissioner about previous approaches, future areas of action, and the political will to end hunger.
Every one degree Celsius rise in temperature increases the risk of conflict by two to ten percent. The climate crisis is a humanitarian crisis, as the photos by Christoph Püschner and Frank Schultze illustrate.
Regarding deforestation free supply chains, there are challenges and opportunities for smallholder farmers as well as for international forest governance. Also, responsibilities for companies and potential incentives for manufacturers to use materials from fair trade and sustainable sources need to be explored. But what does “deforestation-free” actually mean?
The oceans are important for our food supply, but they are overfished. To halt this trend the global community is now taking action against illegal fishing. Journalist Jan Rübel spoke with Francesco Marí, a specialist for world food, agricultural trade and maritime policy at "Brot für die Welt," and others.
Interview with Caroline Milow and Ramon Brentführer
Groundwater resources remain dormant in the soil of African regions. Where does it make sense to use them – and where does overexploitation of nature begin? Caroline Milow (GIZ) and Ramon Brentführer (BGR) talk about potentials in the future and lessons from the past.
Roughly 800 million people suffer from hunger worldwide. Change is needed - for people and for the environment. Brot für die Welt reports on the starting points offered by everyone's ecological footprint and handprint.
Recycling organic waste into soil amendments and animal feed through a transdisciplinary approach – this is what the RUNRES project, launched in four sub-Saharan African countries four years ago, seeks to achieve. Three of the project's scientists report.
The textile industry contributes significantly to environmental pollution as it produces over 100 billion garments every year, resulting in huge CO2 emissions and water consumption. Fashion designer Paul Kadjo uses banana silk as an environmentally friendly alternative to make textile production more environmentally conscious and socially just.
The Nyayo Tea Zones Development Corporation is committed to the preservation of forests in Kenya: The establishment of so-called buffer zones counteracts deforestation by planting trees and tea. In addition to the production of environmentally friendly tea, the project benefits the resources of the forests and the livelihoods of the communities living near the forests, says project manager Wallace Gichunge.
Insurance companies could provide protection during droughts in Africa. How exactly this could be done is what the industry is currently trying to figure out. First experiences are available. An interview with the Managing Director of the Munich Re Foundation, Thomas Loster
The Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2020 shows that the world is not on track to meet the international goal of “zero hunger by 2030”. If we continue at our current speed, around 37 countries will not even have reached a low hunger level by 2030.
Besides the well known impacts of Covid19 lockdowns for the adult population, the associated school closures led to 90 percent of the world’s children with no access to schools. However, school meals are in often the only daily meal for children. Without access to this safety net, issues like hunger, poverty and malnutrition are exacerbated for hundreds of millions of children.
While Africa is the least affected region by Covid-19 so far, the number of confirmed cases and deaths on the continent is quickly rising. Despite the challenges many African countries continue to face, the African response to the coronavirus pandemic displays innovation and ingenuity.
Corona makes it even more difficult to achieve a world without hunger by 2030. So that this perspective does not get out of sight, Germany must play a stronger role internationally - a summary of the Strategic Advisory Group of SEWOH.
From a circular food system in Rwanda to functioning cooled transports in Kenya: The lab of tomorrow addresses development challenges such as preventing food loss and waste
Agroecological methods target diversity and resilience and can thus promote the protection of forests, water and soil. Julia Tomalka and Christoph Gornott, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), on the potential of agroecology to safeguard against climate change and build resilient agri-food system.
Martin Frick has been director of the WFP office in Berlin for a year – since then one hunger crisis has followed another. What are the diplomat's answers? A conversation about opportunities in agriculture, the interplay of multiple crises, the importance of resilience and tighter budgets.
Cities play an important role in the transformation of food systems. But what exactly are the potentials and challenges? A three-way discussion between Ruth Okowa (Gain), Delphine Larrousse (World Vegetable Center) and Conrad Graf von Hoyos (GIZ).
How can agriculture modernise Africa? And does the road to the cities really lead out of poverty? Dr. Reiner Klingholz from the Berlin Institute for Population and Development in conversation with Jan Rübel .
A report by T. S. Jayne, A. Adelaja and R. Mkandawire
Thirty years ago, Africa was synonymous with war, famine and poverty. That narrative is clearly outdated. African living standards are rising remarkably fast. Our authors are convinced that improving education and entrepreneurship will ensure irreversible progress in the region even as it confronts COVID-19.
A contribution by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Africa’s population is young and ready to take its destiny into its own hands. Agriculture offers amazing opportunities in this regard. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation wants to support the next generation in this way.
Interview with Gnininkaboka Dabiré and Innocent Somé
Later on you want to become a farmer yourself, or would you prefer to take up another profession? Two young people from Burkina-Faso talked to representatives of the Dreyer Foundation about their parents' farms, the profession of farmer and their own plans for the future.
The soybean is a natural crop that can be used to make a lot of food. So, Tata Bi started a small processing business first on her own, then with a few other women, which provides the women with an additional source of income year-round besides selling the soybeans.
What happens when young people leave the rural areas? How can the region achieve what is referred to as the demographic bonus – and how can it reap the benefits of the demographic dividend? A look at demography shows the following: What is most important is promoting women’s rights and education.
What do electrical engineering, telecommunications and agriculture have in common? They arouse the passion of Strive Masiyiwa: Thirty years ago, he started an electrical installation company with $75, later riding the telecommunications wave as a pioneer. Today he is committed to transforming African agriculture.
A menstrual health pilot in Rural Malawi empowers rural women in Agribusiness through hygiene products and helps to improve working conditions in rural areas.
During the trade Grüne Woche, school classes visited the BMZ (German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development), Brot für die Welt and Misereor. Each class spends one hour at their stand to learn about the global challenges posed by food systems. A review by Jan Rübel.
Agriculture is coming under pressure worldwide: bacteria, viruses and insects are causing problems for crops. In Palestine, Dr. Rana Samara from the Palestinian Academy of Science and Technology is researching solutions to the problem. And she finds them in nature itself.
VR glasses are hardly a conventional tool in agriculture: for the past three years, they have been used in rural areas of Burkina Faso and Cameroon as a training tool for sustainable cotton cultivation.
During the Women Leadership Programme in May 2024, around 20 women from African countries and Germany met again for a one-week workshop in Bavaria, Germany to become fit for leadership in their organisations. One topic that concerns the women across countries is climate change, but also violence against women and their discrimination in agriculture.
As a passionate social scientist and entrepreneur from Malawi, Ngabaghila Chatata knows that she can overcome any challenge. Her story stands out in a country faced with high unemployment, particularly in its rural areas. As the managing director of Thanthwe Farms, she has set out to inspire the next generation of young agripreneurs – proving that successful business starts with the right mindset, not only capital.
A quick and cost-effective method calculates living wages and incomes for many different countries. The GIZ together with Fairtrade International and Richard and Martha Anker have developed a tool that companies can use to easily analyse income and wage gaps.
Oxfam’s supermarket scorecard, which is in its third year, shows one thing in particular - it works! Supermarkets can change their business policies and focus more on the rights of those people around the world who plant and harvest food. However, this does not happen without pressure.
Stefan Liebing is chairman of the Africa Association of German Business. The manager calls for a better structure of African farms. Jan Rübel asked him about small farmers, the opportunities for German start-ups and a new fund.
Africa has a huge opportunity to make agriculture its economic driver. However, the potential for this is far from being made exhaustive use of, one reason being that women face considerable difficulties in their economic activities. The organisation AWAN Afrika seeks to change this state of affairs.
Three female entrepreneurs from Mozambique, Sri Lanka and Uganda tell their stories about starting organic businesses from scratch, now selling Baobab Oil, Gotukola powder and Shea butter in international markets. And they explain why their business is almost 100 percent female.
When women have control over the resources of a household and manage the income, it usually leads to a more balanced and healthier diet for the family. But often the decision-making power lies with the men. How can this gender inequality be addressed? The GIZ global project Food Security and Resilience provides insights into project work on gender-transformative approaches finances by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
Agrivoltaics is a concept that combines photovoltaic electricity generation and agricultural production, providing the opportunity for a more efficient land use and contributing overall to the integration of food, energy and water systems. This can be particularly interesting for countries in the Global South, where rural electrification rates are often low and food security needs to be improved.
Africa’s drylands seem to be predestined for generating solar and wind power – especially given the current hype over green hydrogen. However, pastoral communities are often put at a disadvantage in this respect. Our author describes the arising conflicts and what successful coexistence of green energy projects and the communities could look like.
Rose Okello is a Matoke farmer and single mother living in a village near Mbarara, a town in southern Uganda. To ensure that she can pay for her family's food, her children's school fees and other expenses on time, Rose uses various financial services. Her story portrays hurdles but also hope for women in agribusiness.
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