AV4Resilience: African vegetables for enhanced functional diversity and resilience of production systems in Burkina Faso through women and youth empowerment

In Burkina Faso, average adult vegetable consumption is 27 grams per day – among the lowest in West Africa, and well below international recommendations of 300 gram daily. African vegetables (AVs) are highly nutritious and a promising option to increase the resilience of food systems to climatic and economic shocks.

AVs are a relatively affordable source of essential micronutrients but require supply- and demand-side interventions to support access and consumption. Also, AVs biodiversity is declining, and they are not well conserved either in farmers’ fields or in genebank.

Women dominate AV value chains in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, but women perspectives are often not well represented in policy decision-making and priority-setting. This project aims to strengthen food and nutrition security in Burkina Faso through capacity building for resilient production systems and enhanced conservation and utilization of AVs.

We understand the need for multidisciplinary, participatory research to identify and test opportunities for AVs to contribute more substantially to people’s diets and livelihoods, and to the economies and environments of West Africa more broadly.

By the end of the project, it expects to have:

1. at least 300 accessions of priority AVs identified, sampled and conserved;
2. selected variety portfolios tested by 300 women and youth farmers on-farm through the triadic comparison of technologies (TRICOT) citizen science approach to select locally-adapted and favored varieties;
3. the women and youth farmers trained in AV production, processing, seed saving and marketing, on-farm conservation, regenerative agriculture for environmentally-friendly production of AVs.