In West Africa, 40 million people suffer from chronic under-nutrition and malnutrition. The underlying factors are linked to food system environments, as well as production, processing and marketing constraints for agricultural products, and to households’ poor means and lack of nutritional knowledge on appropriate foods.

The ASANAO2 programme intends to strengthen reflection on GRET’s and its partners’ intervention strategy for food and nutrition security. It is based on 8 projects being implemented in 8 countries in which GRET and its partners have been conducting actions addressing these issues for many years. It is funding cross-cutting actions consisting of facilitation, exchange, and knowledge production on gateways to be established between agriculture and nutrition. It is also developing advocacy at national and international levels to promote healthy sustainable food systems. On this page you will find various publications produced as part of this programme, and several articles on activities conducted by GRET and its partners in the different countries.

ASANAO2: impacts and benefits

The ASANAO2 programme was rolled out in 8 countries from 2021 to 2024 to promote healthy, sustainable diets. After 3 years of support, the actions conducted have generated numerous impacts, benefitting pregnant and breastfeeding women, young children, small-scale producers and livestock farmers, small local processing businesses and, more broadly, stakeholders in the health and nutrition sectors:

Training and support for women, school children, small-scale producers and farmers, and food and nutrition security actors in countries:

• 750 people trained during 14 sessions on issues and approaches to improve food and nutrition security;
• 11,350 smallholder and livestock farmers trained or supported through proximity support systems;
• 123 farmers’ groups supported by stronger proximity systems for the integration of nutrition;
• Awareness-raising and training on healthy, sustainable diets for 110,000 people, including 5,400 school children and 90,000 women;
• Participation by GRET and its partners in 24 regional and national consultation forums, making it possible to boost collaborations between healthcare and agriculture actors at national and local level.
• 12 exchanges of experience that led to the organisation of 10 multi-country webinars on the promotion of healthy, sustainable diets (school canteens, actions by farmers’ organisations, provision of nutrition-sensitive agricultural advice, fighting against gender inequalities, promotion of local products, etc.);
• 1 toolbox with around one hundred documents (tools for awareness-raising, training, provision of advice, capitalisation factsheets, reports, etc.), including 16 tools for awareness-raising and training on the inclusion of nutrition, 10 studies enabling greater inclusion of nutrition and gender inequalities in the actions conducted, and 15 briefing notes sharing the findings of the actions conducted;

Sustained, collective actions to support small-scale producers and livestock farmers in agroecological transition, and local organisations in processing healthy products with high nutritional value:                    

• 11 initiatives supporting women to reduce gender inequality, 1,080 women supported;
• 14 developments favouring agroecological production for small-scale producers and livestock farmers;
• 5 local services to access local quality seeds (production, homologation), inputs and feed (storage and sale), and agricultural advice;
• 100 local organisations supported (mini dairies, economic initiatives by village credit unions, market-gardening cooperatives, storage and processing units) for collection, marketing, distribution (organisational support), and processing (health quality) of local, healthy products;
• Facilitation and support for 9 local consultation frameworks (milk in Senegal, mangoes and pineapples in Guinea, infant flours in Niger, market gardening in Cambodia, multi-sector in Haiti) that contributed to the co-construction of action plans, partnership agreements, and the implementation of labels;
• 12 infant flour production units boosted to improve production (quantity and quality, in particular health quality) and marketing of fortified infant flours, with an average of 36 tons/month marketed;
• Distribution of infant flours to poor households: 7.5 tons of flours distributed to 750 children;
• 3 certifications obtained by cooperatives after standards were implemented;
• 71 promotional events organised to favour the consumption of healthy foods and the implementation of 500 new local points selling infant flours.

Learn more about Asanao: