Feed the Future Mali Sugu Yiriwa
Mali
Overview
The four-year Feed the Future Mali Sugu Yiriwa activity (2021-2025) aimed to strengthen market systems, increase household incomes, and improve the nutritional status of women and children in Mali. Sugu Yiriwa, prosperous markets in Bambara, empowered actors across the market system to affect lasting systemic change, with a strategic focus on nutrition-sensitive value chains in 46 communes in the Sikasso sub-zone.
Impact
- 81,063 individuals directly participated in Sugu Yiriwa activities
- $27 million generated in annual sales of nutritious food products
- $6.7 million catalyzed in private investment in the local agriculture sector
- 3,396 new jobs created in the agriculture sector
Approach
The $22.4 million Sugu Yiriwa activity engaged and strengthened market actors to achieve results across three mutually reinforcing objectives:
- Enhanced Market Access and Business Linkages: Sugu Yiriwa multiplied business linkages to facilitate the development of more dynamic and functional markets. Building the capacity of market actors increases market preparedness and ensures producer organizations can meet buyer requirements for quality and quantity.
- Improved Access to and Use of Quality and Affordable Inputs and Services: Sugu Yiriwa worked at the input supply system level to reduce costs, improve quality, increase access, and raise awareness among producers on the effective and efficient use of inputs and agricultural services at the farm and firm levels. Sugu Yiriwa also built the capacity of agrodealers to promote enhanced technologies for improved access to information related to weather and prices, and promoted improved labor-saving technologies to improve post-harvest management techniques and support the establishment of input retailer networks.
- Increased Market Demand for Consumption of Nutritious and Safe Foods: Sugu Yiriwa conducted a nutrition and market pathways assessment to understand the factors that drive consumer food choices and diets in the Sugu Yiriwa zone of influence (ZOI). With these results, it identified opportunities at the market and household levels to fill nutrient gaps by improving the availability, affordability, desirability, and consumption of safe and nutritious foods, especially among pregnant and lactating women and children under two.
Partners
To implement Sugu Yiriwa, Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture (CNFA) collaborated with both international and local partner organizations, including Mali Agricultural Market Trust (MALIMARK)is a Malian nongovernmental organization established in 2010 with the support of CNFA under the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)-funded Agrodealer Strengthening Program. A leader in strengthening agricultural input and service systems in Mali, and with a presence in the Sikasso sub-zone, MALIMARK designed strategies and led implementation under Objective 2: Improved Access to and Use of Quality and Affordable Inputs and Services, facilitating the development of a more dynamic input and service sector by building the capacity of agrodealers, increasing market linkages, and improving marketing of inputs, technologies, and services.
The activity also worked with Helen Keller International (HKI), leveraging its 20 years of experience in Mali building local capacity to prevent malnutrition by promoting the resilience of market actors and vulnerable groups through social and behavior change (SBC) interventions. HKI, which also partnered with CNFA on USAID Yalwa, implemented in Niger, led Objective 3: Increased Market Demand for Consumption of Nutritious and Safe Foods.
