Yaajeende Agriculture and Nutrition Development Program

Situation

The Feed The Future Initiative falls under the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative (GHFSI), a program funded by the United States Congress in response to the global food price increases. The program aims to jumpstart a multi-year effort to increase agricultural productivity and trade.

Senegal is particularly vulnerable to the rise in global food prices. Agriculture plays a major role in Senegal’s economy with up to 70 percent of the population involved in the sector. Yet the country relies on imports for 70 percent of its food supply – a rate higher than any other country in Sub-Saharan Africa. Agriculture constitutes the principal source of revenue for more than 85 percent of the Senegalese population, urban and rural alike. To address food security and poverty in Senegal is to address agriculture and the constraints to increasing production and marketing of food and cash crops (USAID Feed the Future Senegal).

What We Do

Counterpart International's Yaajeende program is a 5-year initiative under USAID’s Feed the Future Initiative. It will be implemented in four regions of Senegal (Kedougou, Matam and two others) and the Department of Bakel in the Tambacounda region.

The goal of the Yaajeende Agricultural Development Program is to accelerate the participation of the very poor in rural economic growth and to improve their nutritional status. Interventions under this project will (a) integrate the very poor into agricultural markets and the rural economy; (b) improve the nutritional status of women and children; and (c) increase household assets and income among those who are not or are unable to participate in rural economic activities.

The two components of this program are:

• accelerate the participation of the rural poor in rural growth; and
• reduce under-nutrition.

Counterpart is leading the implementation of the nutrition component of this 5-year program. Counterpart aims to reduce undernutrition by ensuring a healthy and nutritious diet through promotion of a micronutrient rich diet, increasing coverage of nutrition behavior change activities and improving water sanitation and drinking water.

Key activities will include promotion of wild foods, preservation of local foods, meal fortification using local food, gardens and iodized salt, distribution of vitamin A and deworming medicine, behavior change communication/information, education and communication (BCC/IEC) and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) activities.

Ultimately, this project will improve the nutritional status and food security of 1,000,000 people in 100,000 homes in 60 rural communities. Of those people, at least 150,000 will be from the most impoverished households of Senegal.