Homegardens with traditional African vegetables to increase the consumption of nutrient dense vegetables and improve income generation for men and women - lessons from East Africa

Session: WorldVeg has implemented a project funded by USAID on scaling home gardens with traditional African vegetables to improve nutrition of young women and small children, and enhance incomes. The session will focus on the diversity of species being produced, the choices of adoption of good agricultural practices, the patterns of selling versus home consumption, gender labour divisions, and business opportunities and constraints for women vegetable producers.

Biographical information: Ralph Roothaert has a PhD degree from Wageningen University, the Netherlands. He works for the World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) where he is Program Leader of the ‘Healthy Diets Flagship’, one of the Center’s four flagships. He oversees all work on a global scale related to improving nutrition and health using vegetables. He has worked in Africa for 22 years and in Southeast Asia for 3 years. He started as a development worker with the Voluntary Service Overseas in Nigeria, and then worked as an agricultural scientist with the CGIAR (ICRAF in Kenya, CIAT in the Philippines, and ILRI in Ethiopia). He also worked for Farm Africa in Kenya, and Oxfam GB in Tanzania.