New Approaches to Nutrition Bear Fruit in Morogoro

Hadija Ramiya is a young mother living in Towero, one of a number of small villages dotting the hills of Tanzania’s Morogoro Region. Surveying Towero’s lush, green environment boasting towering fruit trees and beautiful views, it might be surprising to learn that mothers like Ramiya wage a daily war against undernutrition, both for themselves and on behalf of their children. Approximately 44 percent of children in Morogoro under the age of five are stunted – an indication of chronic undernutrition that robs children of healthy physical and cognitive development and leaves them exposed to frequent illness. 

 

Ramiya describes her first child, Sam, as sickly and vulnerable to a range of ailments since birth. Without access to a variety of foods or knowledge of proper nutrition, Ramiya relied on community wisdom to decide what to feed her son. When he was two months old, she fed him a diet of water and porridge. At six months, he started eating ugali, the traditional Tanzanian dish of cooked maize flour with sauce. By his first birthday, Sam was eating the same food his parents ate at every meal. 

 

When a Feed the Future-supported nutrition program came to Towero in 2012, Ramiya quickly became involved in its behavior-change activities. With a special focus on social and behavior change communication, the program reaches mothers like Ramiya through peer support groups, where members can learn in a relaxed and familiar environment how to properly nourish themselves and their young children. 

 

Since it started in 2011, this program has reached almost 2,000 villages in Tanzania and supported over 1.5 million women with various nutrition tools and information, such as gardening, micronutrient supplementation and health education.