This project aims to develop and market innovative food products from vitamin A-fortified orange sweet potatoes to address the widespread vitamin deficiency while promoting enterprise development among women in Tanzania.

Project Team: Tuskegee University. C. S. Prakash; Eunice Bonsi; Suchet Loois; Conrad Bonsi; Desmond Mortley; Norma Dawkins; Adelia Bovell-Benjamin; Joel Tumwebaze (graduate student from Uganda). Sokoine University of Agriculture (Theobald Mosha, Henry Laswai); Howarth Bouis.

Micronutrient deficiency is a paramount public health problem in Tanzania and other sub-Sahran African countries, especially among women and children. This project aims to develop and market innovative food products from vitamin A-fortified orange sweet potatoes (OFSP) to address the widespread deficiency while promoting enterprise development among women in Tanzania. Sweet potato growers from the drought-prone and vitamin A-deficient central zone of Tanzania will be the target population. Tanzanian women will be trained in food processing, product development and business management, and supported through small loans to help develop a microenterprise to produce and sell novel sweet potato-based products. Capacity building, outreach and diffusion would be undertaken through social networking and mobile phone messaging technologies. The project team consists of experts from Tuskegee University (USA) and Sokoine University of Agriculture (Tanzania) with expertise in project management and food processing, and with considerable familiarity of Africa.