Robust income growth combined with the highest urban population growth in the world is driving rapid changes in the food system of sub-Saharan Africa. Demand is increasing for higher quality as well as more processed foods. Countries are increasingly experiencing a double burden of over and under nutrition as the overweight and obesity epidemic spreads. In this context, we seek to understand the key drivers and likely evolution of diet quality in Mozambique, in both its positive and negative dimensions, while specifically examining the role of farm ownership among increasingly urban populations. We use national household expenditure survey data and a set of ordinary least square and analysis of variance regressions to observe patterns of current diet quality across city size categories, household income, household education, and other demographic variables. We then anticipate the likely directions of change in diet quality over these same dimensions based on expected income growth and expenditure elasticities developed for several alternative nutrients. We find that growing incomes and the consumption of processed foods are associated with a worsening of negative factors in the diet. Furthermore, urbanization, controlling for income, is associated more strongly with a worsening of negative factors than with an improvement in positive factors in the diet. The effect on diet quality of farm ownership, however, is positive and significant, primarily driven by these households purchasing fewer unhealthy foods. African cities need to consider what mix of policies will counteract the negative effects of continued urbanization and rising incomes on diets.
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), established in 1975, provides evidence-based policy solutions to sustainably end hunger and malnutrition and reduce poverty. The Institute conducts research, communicates results, optimizes partnerships, and builds capacity to ensure sustainable food production, promote healthy food systems, improve markets and trade, transform agriculture, build resilience, and strengthen institutions and governance. Gender is considered in all of the Institute's work. IFPRI collaborates with partners around the world, including development implementers, public institutions, the private sector, and farmers' organizations, to ensure that local, national, regional, and global food policies are based on evidence.
Motivation This article analyses the lessons learned through the lived experience of the 2011–2015 Trilateral Project of Technical Support to the Programs of Nutrition and Food Security (PSAL), a collaboration between US and Brazilian organizations working together in Mozambique with local partners. The PSAL project tested and adapted vegetable crop production, post‐harvest and processing practices and technologies; developed field infrastructure for research, extension and processing; trained scores of Mozambican researchers, interns, interviewers and extension technicians; and collected, organized and made systematic socioeconomic information publicly available. Purpose Trilateral co‐operation (TC) is an innovative model of development assistance involving collaboration by a traditional donor, a pivotal country and a host country. There is little documentation on how it works in practice. In this article, key questions were explored regarding three aspects of suggested best practices for TC: collaboration and co‐ordination; ownership and synergies; adaptive governance. Approach and Methods The project sought to experiment with and learn about practical mechanisms and strategies for effective implementation of TC, and to document benefits, challenges and lessons learned during the process. Drawing on dozens of interviews, anonymous individual surveys of project participants and discussions at the beginning and the end of the project, this article explores the principal challenges and gains from working in TC from the perspective of dozens of project participants. Findings Project participants reported that they improved many aspects of their technical capacity, and benefited from multidisciplinary learning through participation in TC, strengthening Mozambique’s institutional capacity to improve vegetable production. Policy implications and Conclusions The article concludes with recommendations for future TC projects: invest in communications and collaboration based on interdisciplinary trilateral teams; involve all levels of organizations as well as all participating actors in the whole value chain; address limitations, priorities and incentives in local institutions; and adopt innovative and adaptive governance strategies and mechanisms to address the evolution of complex trilateral interactions.
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