BUILDING HEALTHIER BUSINESSES AND COMMUNITIES THROUGH FOOD FORTIFICATION.

BUILDING HEALTHIER BUSINESSES AND COMMUNITIES THROUGH FOOD FORTIFICATION.Food processing businesses are working to end hunger by increasing their capacity to provide quality, nutritious fortified foods for local communities. In Eastern and Southern Africa, 25 million – or 40 percent – of children under the age of five suffer from chronic malnutrition. Adequate nutrition is vital to children’s health and cognitive and physical development, and food fortification is a scalable, cost-effective method to increase communities’ access to nutrients. Yet many small and growing local processors have difficulties producing high-quality, affordable and nutritious products due to a lack of technical and business knowledge and investment. Solutions for African Food Enterprises (SAFE) is a partnership between TechnoServe, Partners in Food Solutions and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which aims to expand the availability of affordable and nutritious foods by increasing the competitiveness of the food processing sectors in Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania. Between launch in 2012 and completion in 2017, SAFE benefited more than 1,000 food processors, who source from more than 973,000 smallholder farmers. more