Africa’s Nutrition Call: Beyond Filling Stomachs To Nourishing Lives
On a warm May afternoon in Rome, far from the heat-hazed plains of the Zambezi Valley or the crowded markets of Mbare, Ambassador Josefa Correia Sacko delivered a message that should echo in every African cabinet room and every smallholder field: Africa must stop producing food that merely fills stomachs, and start growing food that truly nourishes people.
Speaking at an event marking the implementation week of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), Angola’s Ambassador to Italy and former African Union agriculture chief said the continent’s fields and policies must become “more nutrition-sensitive” — focused on diverse, nutrient-rich foods, not just calories.
“This is the nutritional pillar of the Kampala Framework, which calls for food and nutritional security across the continent,” she said, stressing that agricultural investment models must now deliberately pull traditional and indigenous African foods back to the centre of people’s plates.
Why Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture Matters Now
Ambassador Sacko’s intervention comes as African governments, under the CAADP umbrella, reassess how their agriculture delivers on health, livelihoods, and long-term resilience. The Kampala Framework, adopted by African leaders [SOURCE REQUIRED], calls for a decisive shift from production targets alone to food systems that nourish people.
From Rome to Rusape, the question is the same: what is the point of a bumper harvest if children remain stunted, non-communicable diseases rise, and families cannot afford a balanced diet?
FFA Explainer:
Nutrition-sensitive agriculture is an approach where farming, markets, and food policies are designed not only to increase yields or income, but to improve people’s diets and health. It looks at what is grown, how it’s processed, stored, traded, and eaten — with a focus on diversity and nutrient density, not just quantity.
What Is The Kampala Framework’s Nutrition Pillar?
According to Sacko, the nutrition pillar of the Kampala Framework demands that food and nutritional security be achieved by redirecting agricultural investments. That means putting serious money, policy backing, and research into the foods that once defined African diets: small grains, leafy greens, legumes, indigenous fruits, and wild foods.
“It calls … to incorporate traditional and indigenous African foods, which were prevalent in the diets of previous generations,” she emphasised.
This is not nostalgia. It’s strategy. Many of these crops — think of finger millet in Chiredzi, cowpeas in Gokwe, or amaranth in rural Rwanda — are naturally rich in iron, zinc, fibre, and vitamins, and often more tolerant to heat and drought than imported staples.
CAADP, first adopted in 2003 under the African Union’s Agenda 2063 vision, has long pushed African countries to allocate at least 10% of public expenditure to agriculture [SOURCE REQUIRED]. What’s changing now is the content of that spending: from fertiliser and maize alone, to whole food systems that actually improve what people eat.
How Does CAADP’s New Strategy Reframe Food Systems?
Sacko explained that the new CAADP strategy and action plan are built around an agri-food systems approach, with indicators that go far beyond tonnes harvested or income earned.
FFA Explainer:
An agri-food system covers everything from the farm to the table: inputs, production, storage, processing, transport, trade, retail, and finally, what and how people eat. Looking at the whole system helps identify where nutrition is lost, where food is wasted, and where value can be added.
The updated CAADP agenda now tracks:
- Production and productivity,
- Processing and storage,
- Trade and market access,
- Food security and nutrition,
- Resilience to shocks,
- Employment creation, and
- Governance of the food system.
In Sacko’s words, the transformation sought is both economic and social: diversified economies, local employment, higher incomes, stronger social cohesion, and political stability built on better-functioning food systems.
This aligns squarely with AU Agenda 2063 and the UN Sustainable Development Goal 2 on Zero Hunger, which call for sustainable, inclusive food systems that work for both people and the planet.
Why Link Agriculture Directly To Health?
Sacko was blunt: agriculture that is not linked to health and food safety will fail on nutrition.
“Agriculture must be deliberately linked to health and food security, because unsafe food and disease risks undermine nutritional gains,” she warned, adding that healthy diets must be both accessible and affordable.
Unsafe milk sold by the roadside, aflatoxin-contaminated groundnuts, or pesticide-laden vegetables can all wipe out the health benefits of any nutrient-rich food. High treatment costs also drain household incomes, worsening food insecurity.
For African governments, this means that ministries of agriculture, health, trade, and local government can no longer work in parallel. Food safety standards, extension messages, school feeding menus, and market regulations need to speak the same language: nutrition.
In Zimbabwe, this conversation is slowly taking root. The country’s National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1) explicitly links agricultural transformation to improved nutrition and health outcomes, especially for women and children, while programmes like Pfumvudza/Intwasa increasingly encourage inclusion of legumes and small grains alongside maize.
What Does This Shift Mean On A Zimbabwean Farm?
On a one-hectare plot outside Gutu, 37-year-old farmer and mother of three, Memory Mudzamiri [Illustrative — verify or replace], has already started making this shift, even if she’s never heard the phrase “nutrition-sensitive agriculture”.
Last season, she planted only maize and a small patch of covo. After selling most of the maize at harvest to pay school fees, her family spent the lean months relying on sadza and relish cooked from dried vegetables.
This year, with support from a local nutrition field officer [SOURCE REQUIRED], she set aside part of her land for cowpeas, groundnuts, and orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, alongside her maize. She dug a shallow well to water a small garden of leafy greens and tomatoes near her homestead.
“When we harvest now, I don’t just think of the price at the market,” she told FFA [Illustrative — verify or replace]. “I think of what my children will eat every day. I want them to be strong, not just full.”
Her changes reflect exactly the kind of household-level transformation that the Kampala Framework hopes to trigger at scale — from the Shurugwi hills to the shores of Lake Tanganyika.
Why Are Women, Children, And Youth Central To This Agenda?
Ambassador Sacko emphasised that national and regional public investments must be nutrition-sensitive and specifically target women, children, young people, and vulnerable groups.
Women grow a significant share of Africa’s food [SOURCE REQUIRED], often on the smallest plots and with the least access to credit, land rights, and extension. Yet they also decide what gets cooked, how food is shared, and whether children receive diverse diets.
“Ambassador Sacko called for implementation of actions targeted at women, children, young people and vulnerable groups, so that the continent can emerge from the ‘black zone’ of nutrition,” the event report notes.
Zimbabwe’s own Food and Nutrition Security Policy and NDS1 both highlight women and children as priority groups. Yet many field programmes still measure success in bags of grain or number of goats, rather than in reduced stunting or improved diet diversity. The CAADP shift offers an opportunity to align those metrics.
What Are NASIPs, RASIPs, And Why Do They Matter?
Sacko was candid about Africa’s track record on implementation: commitments are made at summits, but delivery on the ground is often slow or uneven.
“The main challenge is moving from commitment to implementation. Africa has made firm commitments before, but implementation has often been patchy,” she argued.
Her answer: integrate the Kampala Framework’s nutrition pillar directly into National Agriculture and Food Security Investment Plans (NASIPs) and Regional Agriculture and Food Security Investment Plans (RASIPs), with “stricter implementation discipline and clearer implementation agreements at national level”.
FFA Explainer:
NASIPs and RASIPs are the main tools through which countries and regional blocs translate CAADP commitments into budgets, projects, and timelines. When a target goes into a NASIP or RASIP, it has a better chance of being costed, funded, and monitored, rather than remaining just a political promise.
Sacko called for measurable actions that can be tracked over time — such as the number of districts promoting indigenous crops, the percentage of schools offering diversified meals, or the share of public procurement going to nutrient-rich foods.
For SADC countries like Zimbabwe, that also means aligning CAADP implementation with the regional frameworks managed by the Southern African Development Community and existing national strategies like NDS1. Fragmented planning is the enemy of real change.
What Targets Has Africa Set Up To 2035?
The new CAADP cycle running up to 2035 carries bold nutrition and food security ambitions. According to Sacko, the continent is aiming for:
- Zero hunger,
- A 25% reduction in stunting, wasting, and overweight, and
- 60% of the population having access to a healthy diet.
These targets, while ambitious, are designed to be achievable within the implementation period that began in 2024 and runs to 2035. They align with national and regional investment plans whose shared vision is clear: “sustainable and resilient agri-food systems for a healthy and prosperous Africa, better equipped to move from aspiration to reality.”
For Zimbabwe, this timeline sits alongside Vision 2030 and NDS1, which also place agriculture at the centre of economic recovery and human development. The test will be whether provincial and district budgets — from Mashonaland West to Matabeleland South — begin to prioritise nutrition outcomes, not just production targets.
How Can Policy Turn Indigenous Foods Into Everyday Diets Again?
One of Sacko’s strongest messages was the call to “incorporate traditional and indigenous African foods” into modern food systems. This is not simply about preservation; it’s about power and resilience.
On the ground, that can look like:
- Seed banks and community seed fairs that keep local varieties alive,
- Extension services training farmers in mixed cropping systems that include legumes and leafy greens,
- School feeding programmes sourcing millet, cowpeas, and pumpkin leaves from local farmers,
- Urban markets with clear labelling and promotion of nutrient-rich indigenous foods, and
- Agro-processing enterprises adding value to small grains and traditional vegetables.
In Zimbabwe, initiatives around traditional grains revival have already begun to change the conversation. Millets and sorghum are increasingly framed not as “poor people’s food” but as climate-smart, health-promoting crops.
Linking these efforts more explicitly to CAADP and the Kampala Framework can help attract regional funding and technical support, including from bodies like the African Union Commission and partners such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
What Should Zimbabwe And Other Countries Do Next?
For governments, the message from Rome is clear: if budgets don’t change, diets won’t change.
Practical next steps could include:
- Revising national NASIPs to include explicit nutrition targets and indicators,
- Allocating funds for evidence-based nutrition interventions in agriculture, such as biofortified crops, home gardens, and farmer nutrition schools,
- Strengthening food safety systems, laboratories, and enforcement to protect public health,
- Supporting women and youth agripreneurs working in nutrient-rich value chains, and
- Using public procurement — hospitals, prisons, schools, army — to create stable demand for diverse, local, nutrient-rich foods.
For farmers, from Nkayi to Nyanga, the shift will show up in extension messages, input packages, and market opportunities. A demonstration plot with beans, cowpeas, and leafy vegetables alongside maize may soon say more about a district’s development ambitions than a monoculture of hybrid maize ever could.
And for families, the measure will be simple: do children eat better? Are plates more colourful, meals more regular, and clinic queues shorter?
From Rome Back To The Field
As the CAADP implementation cycle to 2035 gets under way, Africa stands at a familiar crossroads: strong declarations in conference halls, and stubborn realities in the countryside.
Back in Gutu, Memory is harvesting her first orange-fleshed sweet potatoes. They are not counted in any continental indicator yet. But they matter. Her youngest son now eats them mashed with groundnut powder — a small, daily act of nutrition-sensitive agriculture.
In Rome, Ambassador Sacko spoke of moving “from aspiration to reality.” On fields like Memory’s, that reality is written in the soil, in the crops chosen, and in the meals served after sunset. If Africa listens — and acts — the next decade could belong to those who grow not just more food, but better food.
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[…] districts such as Insiza and Mutasa, pilot programmes are already combining nutrition gardens, small livestock schemes, and clinic-based growth monitoring. These efforts echo global commitments […]