Tag: AFRICA PULSE

Zanzibar’s ‘solar mamas’ are trained as technicians to help light up communities

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ZANZIBAR, Tanzania (AP) — When darkness came, so did the smoke.

Hamna Silima Nyange, like half of the 2 million people in Tanzania’s semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar, did not have a house connected to the electricity grid. After sunset, she would turn to smoky oil lamps that provided the only light for her eight children to study.

”The light was too weak,” Nyange said. “And the smoke from the lamp hurt my eyes.”

Then one day a neighbor, Tatu Omary Hamad, installed solar panels and bulbs that lit her home with help from the strong sunlight along the Indian Ocean coast.

“Today we have enough light,” Nyange said.

Training women to be solar technicians

“Solar Mama” technicians walk on the campus of Barefoot College International in Kinyasini, Unguja, Zanzibar, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jack Denton)

Hamad is one of dozens of “solar mamas” trained in Zanzibar by Barefoot College International, a global nonprofit, through a program that brings light to rural communities and provides jobs for local women. So far in Zanzibar, it has lit 1,845 homes.

The program selects middle-aged women, most with little or no formal education, from villages without electricity and trains them over six months to become solar power technicians. It is one of a small number of programs in Africa including Solar Sister.

The women return to their communities with at least 50 sets of household solar panel kits as well as the skills and equipment to set them up and keep them running.

Barefoot College International focuses on middle-aged women because they tend to have the strongest links to their communities while not often involved in intensive child care.

“We want to train women who become change makers,” said Brenda Geofrey, the director of Barefoot College International Zanzibar.

The Zanzibar campus is in its 10th year of teaching local women. Before that, it sent women for training in India, where Barefoot College International was founded.

“Solar Mama” technicians walk into a classroom on the campus of Barefoot College International in Kinyasini, Unguja, Zanzibar, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jack Denton)

One was Khazija Gharib Issa, who had been an unemployed widow. Now she is a master trainer.

“I got a job. I got a place to stay. Before, I didn’t have one,” Issa said.

The importance of health

Improving health is at the heart of the program’s mission.

Alongside its flagship solar power course, Barefoot College International offers programs for women in tailoring, beekeeping and sustainable agriculture. Every woman who completes a program is trained in general health knowledge that they are expected to take back to their villages.

The “solar mamas” are health catalysts in another way, by replacing harmful light sources like kerosene.

A “Solar Mama” technician wires up a solar charge controller at the campus of Barefoot College International in Kinyasini, Unguja, Zanzibar, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jack Denton)

“Using kerosene has many problems,” said Jacob Dianga, a health care worker at a local clinic who is familiar with the group’s work. The fuel can irritate the eyes, while inhaling its smoke can cause long-term lung damage. It’s also a fire hazard in cramped homes and shops, and can poison children who mistake it for a drink.

“Clean energy is very important,” Dianga said. “It helps protect our health.”

Challenges remain

Barefoot College International has scaled up across Africa, with other campuses in Madagascar and Senegal. In recent years, women have been brought to Zanzibar from Malawi and Somaliland, and this year some are being recruited from Central African Republic.

A “Solar Mama” technician takes a training session on the campus of Barefoot College International in Kinyasini, Unguja, Zanzibar, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jack Denton)

Funding remains a challenge as major donors, notably the United States and European ones, cut foreign aid and projects face more competition for money that remains.

Barefoot College International is run with public and private donations and revenue generated by its social enterprises.

Another challenge is resistance in local communities, where some people find it hard to accept the women technicians in a radical new gender role.

While the solar training program recruits with the approval of village leadership, who put forward candidates, some husbands have stopped their wives from training.

“In most African communities, women are pictured as somebody who is just at home,” Geofrey said.

But the solar mamas say the results often speak for themselves.

“People used to say this work is for men. They were surprised and laughed at me,” Issa said. “But now they see how important my work is. I have become an example.”

A “Solar Mama” technician wires up a solar charge controller at the campus of Barefoot College International in Kinyasini, Unguja, Zanzibar, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jack Denton)

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For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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November 13, 2025
Fortified bouillon cubes are seen as a way to curb malnutrition in Africa

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IBADAN, Nigeria (AP) — In her cramped, dimly lit kitchen, Idowu Bello leans over a gas cooker while stirring a pot of eba, the thick starchy West African staple made from cassava root. Kidney problems and chronic exhaustion forced the 56-year-old Nigerian woman to retire from teaching, and she switches between cooking with gas or over a wood fire depending on the fuel she can afford.

Financial constraints also limit the food Bello has on hand even though doctors have recommended a nutrient-rich diet both to improve her weakening health and to help her teenage daughter, Fatima, grow. Along with eba, on the menu today is melon soup with ponmo, an inexpensive condiment made from dried cowhide.

“Fish, meat, eggs, fruits, vegetables and even milk are costly these days,” Bello, 56, said, her lean face etched with worry.

If public health advocates and the Nigerian government have their way, malnourished households in the West African nation soon will have a simple ingredient available to improve their intake of key vitamins and minerals. Government regulators on Tuesday are launching a code of standards for adding iron, zinc, folic acid and vitamin B12 to bouillon cubes at minimum levels recommended by experts.

While the standards will be voluntary for manufacturers for now, their adoption could help accelerate progress against diets deficient in essential micronutrients, or what is known in nutrition and public health circles as “hidden hunger.” Fortified bouillon cubes could avert up to 16.6 million cases of anemia and up to 11,000 deaths from neural tube defects in Nigeria, according to a new report from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“Regardless of economic situation or income level, everyone uses seasoning cubes,” Bello said as she unwrapped and dropped one in her melon soup.

A growing and multipronged problem

Making do with smaller portions and less nutritious foods is common among many Nigerian households, according to a recent government survey on dietary intake and micronutrients. The survey estimated that 79% of Nigerian households are food insecure.

The climate crisis, which has seen extreme heat and unpredictable rainfall patterns hobble agriculture in Africa’s troubled Sahel region, will worsen the problem, with several million children expected to experience growth problems due to malnutrition between now and 2050, according to the Gates Foundation report released Tuesday.

“Farmlands are destroyed, you have a shortage of food, the system is strained, leading to inflation making it difficult for the people to access foods, including animal-based proteins,” Augustine Okoruwa, a regional program manager at Helen Keller Intl, said, highlighting the link between malnutrition and climate change.

Dietary deficiencies of the micronutrients the government wants added to bouillon cubes already have caused a public health crisis in Nigeria, including a high prevalence of anemia in women of child-bearing age, neural tube defects in newborn babies and stunted growth among children, according to Okoruwa.

Helen Keller Intl, a New York-based nonprofit that works to address the causes of blindness and malnutrition, has partnered with the Gates Foundation and businesses and government agencies in Africa to promote food fortification.

In Nigeria, recent economic policies such as the cancellation of gasoline subsidies are driving the country’s worst cost-of-living crisis in generations, further deepening food hardship for the low-income earners who form the majority of the country’s working population.

Globally, nearly 3 billion people are unable to access healthy diets, 71% of them in developing countries, according to the World Health Organization.

The large-scale production of fortified foods would unlock a new way to “increase micronutrients in the food staples of low-income countries to create resilience for vulnerable families,” the Gates Foundation said.

Bouillon cubes as the vehicle

Bouillon cubes — those small blocks of evaporated meat or vegetable extracts and seasonings that typically are used to flavor soups and stews — are widely consumed in many African countries, nearing 100% household penetration in countries like Nigeria, Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Cameroon, according to a study by Helen Keller Intl.

That makes the cubes the “most cost-effective way” to add minerals and vitamins to the diets of millions of people, Okoruwa said.

No Nigerian manufacturers already include the four micronutrients at the recommended levels, but there is industry interest.

Sweet Nutrition, located in Ota, near Lagos in Nigeria’s southwest, started adding iron to some of its products in 2017. Marketing manager Roop Kumar told The Associated Press it was a “voluntary exercise” to contribute to public health.

“But we are taking trials and looking at further fortification” with the launch of the new regulatory framework, Kumar said.

Although NASCON Allied Industries, a Nigerian company that produces table salt and seasoning cubes, currently does not make products with any of the four micronutrients, quality control manager Josephine Afolayan said fortification is a priority.

“If we’re successful, that would mean that the fortified bouillon seasoning cubes in so many Nigerian dishes would also contribute to improving the micronutrient content of the dishes in my country,” Ladidi Bako-Aiyegbusi, the director of nutrition at Nigeria’s Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, wrote in the Gates Foundation report.

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The Associated Press receives financial support for news coverage in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and for news coverage of women in the workforce and in statehouses from Melinda French Gates’ organization, Pivotal Ventures.

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Compliance and science

Despite the promise of enriching a product that most people have in their pantries, some challenges need to be addressed. One is the “campaign of calumny” in a region where science-led interventions in the food sector have sometimes faced resistance from interest groups, Okoruwa said.

Educating people about the benefits of fortified products may help counter any possible disinformation campaign, said Yunusa Mohammed, the head of the food group at the Standards Organization of Nigeria, the government regulator for consumer products.

There is also the need to make fortified cubes affordable for struggling households like Bello’s, where a pile of firewood she uses to cook outdoors on an open flame is stacked against a wall.

“What we can do is to influence the government and industry on rebates on the importation of raw materials as a public health intervention,” Mohammed said.

Food fortification is not new in Nigeria. Most of the salt consumed in the country is iodized, and products such as wheat flour, cooking oil and sugar are fortified with vitamin A by law. But the requirement for adding the four vitamins and minerals to bouillon is the most comprehensive fortification regulation to date.

Although Nigerian companies do not have to enrich their seasoning cubes yet, experts think setting standards that producers must follow if they choose to will make a difference.

A working group involving representatives from companies, regulatory agencies, research groups and development organizations is in place to accelerate voluntary compliance.

“Ultimately, we will make the bouillon fortification mandatory after seeing the acceptance of the voluntary regulations in the industry,” Mohammed said.

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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September 18, 2024
An ancient African tree is providing a new ‘superfood’ but local harvesters are barely surviving

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Since childhood, Loveness Bhitoni has collected fruit from the gigantic baobab trees surrounding her homestead in Zimbabwe to add variety to the family’s staple corn and millet diet. The 50-year-old Bhitoni never saw them as a source of cash, until now.

Climate change-induced droughts have decimated her crops. Meanwhile, the world has a growing appetite for the fruit of the drought-resistant baobab as a natural health food.

Bhitoni wakes before dawn to go foraging for baobab fruit, sometimes walking barefoot though hot, thorny landscapes with the risk of wildlife attacks. She gathers sacks of the hard-shelled fruit from the ancient trees and sells them on to industrial food processors or individual buyers from the city.

The baobab trade, which took root in her area in 2018, would previously supplement things like children’s school fees and clothing for locals of the small town of Kotwa in northeastern Zimbabwe. Now, it’s a matter of survival following the latest devastating drought in southern Africa, worsened by the El Niño weather phenomenon.

“We are only able to buy corn and salt,” Bhitoni said after a long day’s harvest. “Cooking oil is a luxury because the money is simply not enough. Sometimes I spend a month without buying a bar of soap. I can’t even talk of school fees or children’s clothes.”

The global market for baobab products has spiked, turning rural African areas with an abundance of the trees into source markets. The trees, known for surviving even under severe conditions like drought or fire, need more than 20 years to start producing fruit and aren’t cultivated but foraged.

Tens of thousands of rural people like Bhitoni have emerged to feed the need. The African Baobab Alliance, with members across the continent’s baobab producing countries, projects that more than 1 million rural African women could reap economic benefits from the fruit, which remains fresh for long periods because of its thick shell.

The alliance’s members train locals on food safety. They also encourage people to collect the fruit, which can grow to 8 inches (20 centimeters) wide and 21 inches (53 centimeters) long, from the ground rather than the hazardous work of climbing the enormous, thick-trunked trees. Many, especially men, still do, however.

Native to the African continent, the baobab is known as the “tree of life” for its resilience and is found from South Africa to Kenya to Sudan and Senegal. Zimbabwe has about 5 million of the trees, according to Zimtrade, a government export agency.

But the baobab’s health benefits long went unnoticed elsewhere.

Gus Le Breton, a pioneer of the industry, remembers the early days.

“Baobab did not develop into a globally traded and known superfood by accident,” said Le Breton, recalling years of regulatory, safety and toxicology testing to convince authorities in the European Union and United States to approve it.

“It was ridiculous because the baobab fruit has been consumed in Africa safely for thousands and thousands of years,” said Le Breton, an ethnobotanist specializing in African plants used for food and medicine.

Studies have shown that the baobab fruit has several health benefits as an antioxidant, and a source of vitamin C and essential minerals such as zinc, potassium and magnesium.

The U.S. legalized the import of baobab powder as a food and beverage ingredient in 2009, a year after the EU. But getting foreign taste buds to accept the sharp, tart-like taste took repeated trips to Western and Asian countries.

“No one had ever heard of it, they didn’t know how to pronounce its name. It took us a long time,” Le Breton said. The tree is pronounced BAY-uh-bab.

Together with China, the U.S. and Europe now account for baobab powder’s biggest markets. The Dutch government’s Center for the Promotion of Imports says the global market could reach $10 billion by 2027. Le Breton says his association projects a 200% growth in global demand between 2025 and 2030, and is also looking at increasing consumption among Africa’s increasingly health-conscious urbanites.

Companies such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi have opened product lines promoting baobab ingredients. In Europe, the powder is hyped by some as having “real star qualities” and is used to flavor beverages, cereals, yogurt, snack bars and other items.

A packet of a kilogram (2.2 pound) of baobab powder sells for around 27 euros (about $30) in Germany. In the United Kingdom, a 100-milliliter (3.38-ounce) bottle of baobab beauty oil can fetch 25 pounds (about $33).

The growing industry is on display at a processing plant in Zimbabwe, where baobab pulp is bagged separately from the seeds. Each bag has a tag tracing it to the harvester who sold it. Outside the factory, the hard shells are turned into biochar, an ash given to farmers for free to make organic compost.

Harvesters like Bhitoni say they can only dream of affording the commercial products the fruit becomes. She earns 17 cents for every kilogram of the fruit and she can spend up to eight hours a day walking through the sunbaked savanna. She has exhausted the trees nearby.

“The fruit is in demand, but the trees did not produce much this year, so sometimes I return without filling up a single sack,” Bhitoni said. “I need five sacks to get enough money to buy a 10-kilogram (22-pound) packet of cornmeal.”

Some individual buyers who feed a growing market for the powder in Zimbabwe’s urban areas prey on residents’ drought-induced hunger, offering cornmeal in exchange for seven 20-liter (around 4-gallon) buckets of cracked fruit, she said.

“People have no choice because they have nothing,” said Kingstone Shero, the local councilor. “The buyers are imposing prices on us and we don’t have the capacity to resist because of hunger.”

Le Breton sees better prices ahead as the market expands.

“I think that the market has grown significantly, (but) I don’t think it has grown exponentially. It’s been fairly steady growth,” he said. “I believe at some point that it will increase in value as well. And at that point, then I think that the harvesters will really start to be earning some serious income from the harvesting and sale of this really truly remarkable fruit.”.

Zimtrade, the government export agency, has lamented the low prices paid to baobab pickers and says it’s looking at partnering with rural women to set up processing plants.

The difficult situation is likely to continue due to a lack of negotiating power by fruit pickers, some of them children, said Prosper Chitambara, a development economist based in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.

On a recent day, Bhitoni walked from one baobab tree to the next. She carefully examined each fruit before leaving the smaller ones for wild animals such as baboons and elephants to eat — an age-old tradition.

“It is tough work, but the buyers don’t even understand this when we ask them to increase prices,” she said.

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For more news on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

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The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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September 18, 2024