FRESH-EN UP: A new partnership to boost demand for fruit and vegetables in Tanzania

A new global partnership is taking shape to understand and promote fruit and vegetable intake in Tanzania. Funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office through the UK-CGIAR Centre, FRESH-EN UP is one of two inaugural research grants aimed at strengthening collaboration between CGIAR and UK science.

Building on the CGIAR Research Initiative on Fruit and Vegetables for Sustainable Healthy Diets (FRESH), the technical focus of FRESH-EN UP is to increase demand for fruit and vegetables in Tanzania, especially among women and adolescents. The project is co-led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), and Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA).

“Increasing intake of fruit and vegetables worldwide is a big challenge,” said Deanna Olney, director of IFPRI’s Nutrition, Diets, and Health (NDH) Unit and FRESH Initiative lead. “Dietary patterns are driven by complex factors. Finding ways to make meaningful, sustainable, and healthy changes will require innovative thinking and collaboration across many stakeholders.”

FRESH-EN UP will focus on three themes:

• Dietary intake and consumption analysis: Using existing datasets to understand dietary intake, household consumption patterns, and micronutrient status in Tanzania and identify nutritional vulnerabilities to inform the design of interventions.
• Intervention co-design: Co-designing and testing the impact of a package of demand-side interventions to increase fruit and vegetable intake in Tanzania.
• Partnership development and capacity sharing to inform scalability: Establishing partnerships that enable the sharing of knowledge, resources, and capacities to inform nutrition program and policy decisions.

Building the foundation: Initial workshops

To lay the groundwork for the project, two initial workshops were facilitated. The first took place in Washington, D.C., in April 2024 to establish goals for the partnership, determine roles and responsibilities, and outline key steps.

During the first workshop, FRESH researchers explained the Initiative’s ongoing end-to-end evaluation in Tanzania, which is designed to assess the impact of demand, food environment, and supply interventions on fruit and vegetable intake, vegetable production, and other outcomes by addressing barriers to availability, accessibility, affordability, and desirability. Preliminary findings from the baseline data were presented, providing context on the drivers of food choice, food safety, nutritional status, and dietary intake patterns in Tanzania.

LSHTM researchers shared insights from previous trials involving food systems interventions for improved nutrition and their experience in co-designing policy engagement tools to enable evidence-based decisions to achieve nutritious food systems, such as the Micronutrient Action Policy Support (MAPS) tool.

In July 2024, a second workshop was held in London, United Kingdom, to refine the project’s scope and strengthen partnerships. The team made progress toward a comprehensive proposal, outlining the objectives, activities, and budget. The workshop also provided an opportunity to explore potential synergies with other UK-CGIAR initiatives working on similar issues.

“The partnership grant from the UK-CGIAR Centre provides a great opportunity for UK researchers to contribute to a high-profile CGIAR Initiative, generating evidence on feasible and effective strategies to increase fruit and vegetable consumption in Tanzania,” said Edward Joy, LSHTM associate professor. “We’re grateful for this opportunity and excited by the work ahead.”

Stakeholder engagement and intervention design

Building on the momentum generated during the first two workshops, the FRESH-EN UP team convened for a third workshop in August 2024. The event took place in Arusha, Tanzania, following the 2024 FRESH Science Conference and annual meeting.

The FRESH-EN UP workshop brought together local stakeholders, including district officials, implementers, community leaders, and potential beneficiaries, to co-design demand-side interventions that are feasible and culturally relevant. By involving local communities in the intervention design process, FRESH-EN UP aims to increase buy-in and achieve sustainable dietary impacts.

FRESH-EN UP partnered with the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) to incorporate human-centered design (HCD) into the workshop using GAIN’s HCD Toolkit for Nutrition-Sensitive Social Protection. Use of the toolkit ensured a transformative and participatory co-design process for FRESH-EN UP’s interventions.

“It is important that we engage with stakeholders for various reasons,” said Joyce Kinabo, SUA professor of human nutrition and co-principal investigator for the FRESH Tanzania end-to-end evaluation. “Leveraging on their expertise, resources, and accessibility to information will aid in the implementation of interventions and dissemination of results.”

By combining the expertise of diverse partners and building upon existing knowledge, FRESH-EN UP is well-positioned to promote healthier diets in Tanzania. The demand-side interventions co-designed through this project will accent FRESH’s supply-side and food environment activities, addressing barriers to fruit and vegetable intake across the food system.

The FRESH Initiative is being implemented by CGIAR researchers from IFPRI, CIMMYT, the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, IWMI, and CIP in close partnership with the World Vegetable Center, Applied Horticultural Research, the University of Sydney, the Institute of Development Studies, Wageningen University & Research, the University of California, Davis, Borlaug Institute of South Asia, Sokoine University of Agriculture, Wayamba University of Sri Lanka and the Philippines Department of Science and Technology-Food and Nutrition Research Institute, along with other partners.  

Header image: FRESH-EN UP team during the first workshop in Washington, D.C., in April 2024.