In Guinea, raising families’ awareness to improve food and nutritional security

Since 2013, GRET has been working to improve food and nutritional security in Forest Guinea and Middle Guinea. It provides support to activities aimed at boosting agricultural value chains (in particular market gardening, rice and palm oil), with pilot actions raising awareness of families on best nutritional practices.

The context: a stunting rate on the brink of the WHO critical threshold

In Forest Guinea, 38% of children under the age of 5 suffer from stunting: this statistic is very close to the critical threshold of 40% defined by the WHO. One third of infant mortality is caused by malnutrition.

“Malnutrition in Guinea is due to the poor quality of food and frequent illnesses”, explains Etienne Mauchard Bah, Sara project manager with GRET. The risk is even higher for children under the age of two and pregnant and breastfeeding women.”

Nutridev’s actions in Guinea since 2013

In Forest Guinea and Middle Guinea, GRET initiated work on a survey of women, families and local authorities which made it possible to reveal that poor feeding, hygiene and healthcare practices are mainly due to lack of knowledge. Since 2013, awareness-raising activities are being conducted in these two areas. GRET supports the FPFD (Fouta Djalon Farmers’ Federation), a cooperative of over 30,000 market gardeners and cereal growers, to conduct awareness-raising actions on best nutritional practices for its technicians, elected representatives and members.

Between 2014 and the end of 2015, the Ebola epidemic profoundly changed populations’ eating habits. In Forest Guinea, GRET conducted a new diagnosis of nutritional practices in order to determine the changes that occurred during this period and to update its awareness-raising strategy.   Today, 200 palm oil and rice farmers’ groups and 3,350 families are concerned by GRET’s actions.

At national level, GRET is part of the process to define national awareness-raising tools with a view to changing nutritional practices. In addition to large-scale broadcasting of messages by radio, 560 awareness-raising activities were conducted at community level in 2015 on various subjects including the link between agriculture and nutrition.

Contact person in the country: Etienne Mauchard Bah, mauchardbah[at]gret.org

Nutridev’s actions in Guinea are conducted thanks to support from:

• Financial partner: European Union
• Technical partners: AGPI, CCFD-Terre solidaire, FPFD, MGE (Guinean entrepreneurs’ centre)