The InNuSens project carries out practical research and brings German and East African institutions together to exchange ideas about food security in the face of climate change.

Sub-Saharan Africa faces many challenges. One of them is climate change, which is having a serious detrimental impact on agriculture. At the same time, populations are growing, so ensuring food security and promoting employment in the agricultural sector are important issues in the region. This is exactly where the BMBF-funded DAAD programme Partnerships for sustainable solutions with Sub-Saharan Africa – measures for research and integrated postgraduate education and further training comes in. It supports partnerships between African institutions and German universities, non-university research institutions and companies: joint research and training projects aim to develop practical approaches to overcoming global problems – such as the need for the agricultural and food sector to adapt to new climatic conditions.

“Hunger is on the rise again in many regions of Africa. Furthermore, children are increasingly not receiving enough healthy foods and are suffering from acute malnutrition,” explains Professor Susanne Huyskens-Keil from the Thaer-Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU). To find ways out of this food crisis, the HU has teamed up with leading research institutions in East Africa: Egerton University and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in Kenya, Makerere University in Uganda, and the National Institute of Transport in Tanzania.

Marketing traditional African vegetable varieties

In a project funded by the DAAD partnership programme, the participating institutions are working on professionalising the cultivation and marketing of traditional African vegetable varieties and gearing the value chain towards food security. “Inclusive nutrition-sensitive value chains in Kenya and Uganda – Upgrading strategies for underutilised horticultural crops”, or InNuSens for short, is the name of the project that was launched in 2021. Besides conducting practical research, it supports the partner universities in their structural development. Susanne Huyskens-Keil and her colleague Professor Dagmar Mithöfer are responsible for the project on the German side.

Traditional African leaf vegetable varieties such as amaranth (Amaranthus spp.), cowpea leaves (Vigna unguiculata) and the spider plant (Cleome spp.) are resilient and contain important micronutrients and vitamins. They also require virtually no fertilisers. This makes them well suited to being cultivated under adverse climatic conditions and could also help supply a growing population with healthy foods. Demand for these long-neglected vegetable varieties has risen accordingly in recent years.

The InNuSens project supports the commercialisation of these African leaf vegetable varieties along the value chain. Four doctoral candidates from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania are working together with local actors to develop new post-harvest technologies, find ways to optimise logistics and transport, and create innovative marketing methods, for example using apps. “We are exploring entirely new product ideas, specially adapted distribution technologies and business models for selling the products,” explains Susanne Huyskens-Keil. This is giving rise to additional employment prospects, especially for young people in rural areas and for women. Women in Kenya have already set up small-scale production and marketing organisations.

Long-term co-operation involving knowledge transfer

Networks in all partner countries have been created in which all kinds of actors work together: researchers from various specialist fields, farmers, processing plants, transport companies and traders. Training courses and summer schools focusing on the project’s core topics are regularly held within the networks. “The idea is that these structures should ensure long-term co-operation involving knowledge transfer and knowledge sharing,” says Huyskens-Keil.

The InNuSens project is thus a prime example of what the German government hopes to achieve with its Africa Strategy. Sub-Saharan Africa in particular is to be supported in overcoming global and regional crises with a view to fully exploiting its development potential. Activities are guided by the development targets set by the African Union, while co-operation on an equal footing is the objective. “The expertise is available in Africa,” says Susanne Huyskens-Keil. “Within the framework of our projects, we support African countries in establishing national and international networks of researchers and practitioners.”

Field work with students

Network meetings in the partner countries take place twice a year, while once a year an additional workshop is organised with a subsequent summer school that is attended by the African project partners from the various disciplines and their colleagues from Berlin. “This is how we ensure continuity and thus the project’s future viability,” says Susanne Huyskens-Keil. In her opinion, it is also important to involve students from all the partner universities to achieve long-term sustainability. In 2022, a total of 15 German and African students undertook two weeks of field work as part of a trans- and interdisciplinary study project in Kenya. They stayed with smallholders families and investigated where and why parts of the vegetable crop can go missing in the value chain.

One vital role in the success of InNuSens is played by the longstanding ties between the partner universities, which were forged during a previous project run by the now retired Professor Wolfgang Bokelmann: “Hortinlea – Diversifying Food Systems: Horticultural Innovations and Learning for Improved Nutrition and Livelihood in East Africa”. “This enabled us to build on established structures and years of outstanding collaboration,” says Susanne Huyskens-Keil. Strong networks like this are the key to tackling global challenges.

Ulrike Scheffer (2 October 2023)