Back by popular demand - A Bioversity Project Report

More than ten years ago, scientists at Bioversity’s regional office in Kenya noticed an alarming development. The traditional African leafy vegetables they had eaten as children were rapidly disappearing from farmers’ fields and people’s tables. Bioversity and its partners set out to reverse this trend. 

Mary Wangari is fresh produce assistant at a Tusker supermarket in Nairobi, Kenya. Over the past few years, Mary has noticed a real change in the leafy vegetable corner of the fresh produce section.

Since the supermarket began stocking traditional African leafy vegetables about four years ago, demand has increased to such an extent that, despite daily deliveries, by the time the afternoon arrives there is often not enough left to meet shoppers’ needs.

Demand for leafy vegetables now outweighs supply, with an astonishing increase in sales of 1100% in just two years (see  'What’s on the menu'  [1] (261 KB) taken from Bioversity Annual Report 2005  [2]). But things haven’t always been this good.

Until recently, traditional African leafy vegetables were considered by many to be inferior to and less fashionable than introduced vegetables such as cabbage and kale. The conditions in which the indigenous leafy vegetables were grown and sold did little to improve their image, with consumers fearing that they were dirty and unhygienic. Faced with a lack of demand, farmers stopped growing them.

Two major projects led by Bioversity International set out to change this situation. They worked with farmers, NGOs, universities, hospitals, national research institutes and others across sub-Saharan Africa to improve livelihoods and nutrition by increasing production and consumption of leafy vegetables. This would also serve to ensure the conservation of the crops. The projects came to a close three years ago and although there was evidence of their success (see  'Assessing the impact of our work'  [3] (114 KB) taken from Bioversity Annual Report 2006  [4]), no formal impact assessment had been carried out.

Elisabetta Gotor, an Italian Associate Expert at Bioversity, recently carried out a study to assess the impact and sustainability of the projects’ efforts in Kenya. “Ten years have passed since these efforts first began and we wanted to know what the impact had been on people’s lives,” explained Gotor. But the impact study went further. “We also wanted to find out exactly what Bioversity’s contribution was and whether this role could have been played by anyone else,” Gotor continued. 

In addition to interviews with partners, the study sampled a total of 211 households from four regions involved in the project: Kisii in western Kenya, Tharaka-Nithi in the eastern province, Kilifi on the coast and periurban Nairobi, including the Kiambu and Thika districts. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, including focus groups, interviews and surveys, was used to ensure accuracy. Where possible, data collected at the beginning of the projects were used to provide a baseline for the impact study.

Results confirmed that the project’s efforts were successful. Production of leafy vegetables in peri-urban Nairobi, for example, has increased more than tenfold since 1997. Incomes have increased too, particularly where farmers have been successfully linked to markets (see figure). And women, the main producers of leafy vegetables, were the main beneficiaries. In almost 80% of the households it was the women exclusively who kept the cash from sales of leafy vegetables and who decided what it would be spent on— mostly on more and better food and paying for schooling for their children. (This mirrors the impact of research on informal seed systems in Mali; see  'Saving seeds in the Sahel'  [5] (224 KB) taken from Bioversity Annual Report 2007  [6])