In sub-Saharan Africa, improving nutrition has been declared a priority by regional bodies and national governments, many of which have highlighted the important role of diversifying food production. The causes of malnutrition are complex, however low-quality, and poor diets, with insufficient consumption of fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts and whole grains are common in this region. Among the reasons that hamper the intake of healthy foods such fruit and vegetable are supply side limitations, including limited inputs, seed systems and technical know-how, seasonality, inappropriate post-harvest handling and limited value addition technologies, and demand side limitations including low nutrition literacy and higher costs of such foods as compared to others.

In addition, in many locations, long dry periods and increasingly unstable weather caused by anthropogenic climate change mean that securing year-round availability of nutritious food is a topic of increasing importance. Furthermore, because of over-reliance on rain-fed maize, smallholder farmers in Southern Africa are highly vulnerable to extreme weather events such as droughts or floods. On the other hand, diversification of farm production contributes to resilience in terms of food security and income stability.

Previous work across four East African countries has demonstrated that carefully designed portfolios combining food trees – those that supply edible fruits, nuts, leaves, etc. – with existing vegetable, pulse and staple crops can address seasonal harvest gaps and nutrient deficits in local food systems (McMullin et al. 2019). Building on this work and based on an agroecological approach, this project will pilot portfolios in Southern Africa under different contextual conditions, informed by adoption rates of this technology at original sites in East Africa.