18 Wednesday, November 26 2014 BUSINESS REPORT

Opinion&Analysis

MANY people who live in Liradistrict in northern Ugandaconsider Perpetua Okao afarmer and a life saver – andit is easy to know why. Her

neighbour’s son was malnourished andoften sickly. But after feeding him a diet ofvitamin A-rich orange-fleshed sweet po-tato, the boy’s health improved dramati-cally in just a few days. Okao is amongsome 126 000 Ugandan farmers growingthe orange-fleshed sweet potato, a new variety of potato enriched with vitamin Athrough biofortification.

Biofortification is a process by whichcrops are bred in a way that increases theirnutritional value. The idea behind biofor-tification is to breed nutritious plants, aprocess that experts consider muchcheaper than adding micronutrients to al-ready processed foods. It is a smart methodto fight malnutrition, say agriculturistsand nutritionists. The Food and Agricul-tural Organisation (FAO), a UN foodagency, considers malnutrition-caused by alack of essential micronutrients such asiodine, iron, zinc and vitamin A in diets athreat to millions of African lives.

Uganda’s exampleBiofortification can mitigate the effects ofvitamin A deficiency in people, reportsHarvestPlus, a research centre committedto fighting global hunger. Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates pro-vides financial support to HarvestPlus.

The organisation further notes that

vitamin A deficiency is a serious healthproblem in more than 90 countries butmore acutely in Africa and Asia. The defi-ciency causes preventable blindness inchildren and increases the risk of diseaseand death from severe infections. It alsocauses night blindness in women and in-creases the risk of maternal mortality.

In Africa, HarvestPlus estimates that42 percent of children under the age of fiveand women between 15 and 49 years of agesuffer from vitamin A deficiency. Uganda,which is severely affected, is extensivelyproducing the orange-fleshed sweet potatovariety rich in beta-carotene, an organiccompound that converts to vitamin A inthe human body.

In 2012, HarvestPlus and the US Agencyfor International Development (USAid)launched a “Feed the Future” programmeand introduced the new sweet potato vari-ety. Okao, along with the Ugandan govern-ment, USAid and HarvestPlus, providedenriched sweet potato plants to breed withthe local white or yellow variety to morethan 10 000 farming households.

The results so far indicate that 60 per-cent of the households replaced a third ofthe traditional sweet potato varieties.Thanks to the new sweet potato variety,vitamin A levels have increased amongUgandan children, making them healthierthan before, according to HarvestPlus.

Africa confronts challengeBut malnutrition is not just a Ugandanproblem; it is widespread in Africa, saysthe FAO. The agency estimates that 30 per-cent of Africa’s children are malnour-ished and stunted, have reduced learningand earning potential, and are vulnerableto infections and early death.

The quest for more nutritious foods forAfricans was the subject of a three-dayconference on biofortification last April inKigali, Rwanda. At that conference, morethan 275 top government, business andcivil society leaders discussed ways tostart a continent-wide adoption of

biofortification. Akinwumi Adesina, Nigeria’s agri-

culture minister, wants his country tobecome Africa’s lead producer of bio-fortified foods. Under its agriculture-for-health programme, Africa’s most populouscountry wants to develop vitamin A-enriched cassava varieties to addressmicronutrient malnutrition.

Nigeria has incorporated pro-vitamin Acassava and orange-fleshed sweet potatoesin its Growth Enhancement SupportScheme, whose goal is to reach 2.5 millionfarming households.

Like Nigeria, Zambia has introducedpro-vitamin A cassava and maize. InRwanda, about half a million farmers aregrowing new varieties of beans rich iniron. Farmers using these varieties areharvesting more yields per hectare andearning more income selling the surplus.

Martha Birungi, a farmer in Rwanda’seastern district, is currently growingnutritious and high-yield iron-rich beansand earning a higher income than before.

“The new varieties of beans are big insize and when you cook them they expandand are very delicious. They have higheriron content when compared to theindigenous ones we were used to,”Birungi said.

She added that the enriched-iron beansprovided more than three tons per hectarecompared with less than a ton fromindigenous bean varieties.

Scaling up effortsHarvestPlus and partners plan to developmore varieties of crops that will provideadequate vitamin A, zinc or iron to morethan 2 billion people worldwide. “We’rejust beginning to scratch the surface… Wewant to increase access to these nutritiouscrops as quickly as possible,” HowarthBouis, the director of HarvestPlus, said.

He added: “I think we have had un-equivocal success in Africa with the or-ange flesh sweet potato.”

Yassir Islam, the organisation’s spokes-man, told Africa Renewal that they hadscaled up interventions in about 15 Africancountries, including in the DemocraticRepublic of the Congo (DRC), Kenya,Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Zam-bia, with most of the work carried out bythe International Potato Centre, a Peru-based research centre.

Islam said Rwanda was the first target

country because beans were one of itsmost important staple foods. HarvestPlusmoved on to Uganda and the eastern DRC,even as they planned further interventionsin more African countries.

The World Food Programme (WFP), aUN agency, has noticed the success storiesin the malnutrition fight in Uganda, theDRC and Rwanda. The WFP now buysmore than $1 billion (R11bn) worth of foodeach year from developing countries, andhas 77 tons of iron-fortified beans for itsfood support programmes, according toKen Davies, the WFP’s global co-ordinator.

“The potential for introducing micronu-trient and biofortified foods into the WFP’sfood basket is immense because small-holder farmers in many countries arechallenged by micronutrient deficiencies,”noted Davies, who added that there wasstill a long way to go in the fight againstmalnutrition.

Accepted realityJeff Waage, the technical adviser at theGlobal Panel on Agriculture and Food Sys-tems, an expert group tackling challengesin food and nutrition security, said the ben-efits of biofortification in crops were obvi-ous. What remained was unlocking the potential for biofortification to engenderbetter agriculture and food policies thatpromoted nutrition.

The World Bank’s vice-president RachelKyte concurs and highlights the bank’scommitment to boosting production of bio-fortified crops. Biofortification, Kyte said,provided a pathway to nutritional securityfor Africa’s food system. She said scientificresearch on the possibilities of biofortifica-tion was no longer up for debate; it was anaccepted reality.

Concerned about malnutrition rates inthe region, African policymakers and for-eign partners were beginning to appreciatethe value of the science behind biofortifi-cation, said Robin Buruchara, the regionaldirector for Africa at the InternationalCentre for Tropical Agriculture, whichworks with 30 countries in east and south-ern Africa. “We are flipping the conversa-tion from: ‘Is it is possible, can we do it, isit safe, do we get greater yield?’ to ‘How dowe get this into the bowl and hands of chil-dren across the continent in Africa’.”

With increasing foreign direct invest-ment flows in Africa and a growing grossdomestic product driven in part by a min-ing boom and agricultural growth, fillingempty stomachs in Africa is urgent, ex-perts say. Biofortification is an area inwhich Africa is taking the lead.

“This [biofortification] is one of thegreatest innovations in the world and it isbeing driven by Africans from Africa andit will be Africa in the forefront,” Kyte toldAfrica Renewal. “This is not Africa follow-ing the rest of the world, this is Africa say-ing we are going first.”

This feature is published with permission from theUN’s Africa Renewal features service.

THE WORLD debate may be pre-occupied with “hot” crises in theMiddle East, Isis, EasternUkraine and fighting Ebola. Yettensions in East Asia have not

subsided. Even though the region has seenquite a remarkable level of peace eversince China’s war with Vietnam in 1978/79,there is a new uncertainty.

The major cause of past progress wasthe security guarantee provided by the US,coupled with China’s intent to “rise” peace-fully. Another key stabilising factor hasbeen the gradual economic integrationamong the countries of South-East Asiaand in East Asia. Together, this hasbrought slow, but continuous accommoda-tion of one another’s political interests andobjectives across Asia.

If there is talk now of rising tensions inEast Asia and a growing apprehensiveness,then usually it is China which is seen as re-sponsible. More precisely put, the tensionsare seen as a consequence of China’s rise.

As things stand, it appears that when-ever a neighbour of China acts in a waythat may be interpreted in Beijing as aneven minor provocation of China, China

will assert itself robustly and change theoverall situation to its advantage.

To give but one example, when thePhilippine navy in May 2013 tried to expelChinese fishermen from the ScarboroughShoal reef, 130 nautical miles from thePhilippine coast (and 550 such miles fromthe Chinese coast), the Chinese navyintervened. Today, the reef is de facto inChinese hands.

It seems that the way in which China’sleaders regard the future role of theircountry in the region and the world haschanged.

Both the “peaceful rise” rhetoric andstatements made only ten years ago to ex-press the intention that China’s rise will re-main compatible with the interests of itspartners seem to have made room for anew way of thinking.

This issue loomed large again in thebackground of the recently concludedApec Summit. For all the official focus oneconomic co-operation, geopolitical andstrategic issues always lurk large, eventhough they are not on the “official”agenda.

While this is no surprise to Asians,what may surprise them is how much thisis also a matter of global interest. The rea-

son for that is twofold: First, looking ahead,Asia may eventually become the most im-portant part of the global economy.

And second, China already has intenseeconomic relationships all over the globe,including in Europe and the US. That’swhy other nations outside of Asia aregreatly concerned if China’s relationshipwith the rest of the continent remains unsettled.

One key question at this juncture iswhat the other countries in Asia can do tokeep their relationship with the Chineseon a constructive footing and to do theirpart in securing the future prosperity ofAsia. It is here that the European exampleand the importance of relying on trade re-lations as a key confidence-building meas-ure may be of use. For real progress to bemade, countries have to be able and willing

to jump over the shadows of the past. Thatis no easy feat.

However, strengthened trade relationshave the advantage of incentivising coun-tries in that critical regard. They offer up

meaningful progress in people’s daily livesthrough greater economic integrationacross the entire region.

At a time when progress towards freerglobal trade at the multilateral level move,at best, at a glacial pace, bilateral andregional trade deals assume a bigger im-portance. And despite general concernsthat this may lead to a fracturing of theglobal trade landscape, certainly with re-gard to Asia such agreements – whether bi-lateral, trilateral or multilateral – couldturn into true progress.

Far beyond the “China factor” in Asia,quite a lot of nations across Asia havequite a loaded history when it comes tosome of their neighbours. Trade agree-ments can be a useful lever to overcomesuch shadows of the past.

One particularly inspiring example in

this regard – and one that ought to impartcourage to other Asian countries withsimilarly fraught relationships to take sim-ilar steps – concerns the change in rela-tions between South Korea and Vietnam.Fifty years ago, South Korean troopsfought in Vietnam alongside the Ameri-cans, all in the name of checking the IronCurtain.

In spite of that painful past, SouthKorea and Vietnam are now set to ink anFTA of their own by year’s end. Construc-tive steps like that show the way forwardfor all of Asia.

Volker Stanzel is former German ambassador toJapan and China, and former political director ofthe German Foreign Office. Copyright TheGlobalist, where this article first appeared. FollowThe Globalist on Twitter: @theGlobalist

❚❚ DILBERT ❚❚ DIARY

Biofortification a bowl of hope for Africa’s malnourished

Trade paints overSouth-East Asiansimmering tensions

FAO estimates that 30% of Africa’s children aremalnourished and stunted,have reduced learning andearning potential and arevulnerable to infections…

Far beyond the ‘Chinafactor’ in Asia quitea lot of nations across Asiahave quite a loaded historywhen it comes totheir neighbours.

NUTRITIONALADVANCE

PLAYING sport once a fortnightcan boost annual earnings byalmost £11 000 (R189 128) – theequivalent of more than £500 000over the course of a career, a newstudy has found.

Those involved in regularorganised sports could boost theirannual salary significantly due tothe skills they gained from par-ticipating in group activities,experts said.

The research, which was com-missioned by property firm CBREand consulted 2 000 workers, found

that employees who did not takepart in organised sports earnedjust under £24 000 on average.

In contrast, those who engagedin sporting activities earned£11 000 more than the averagewage, with triathletes topping thelist of salary earners with anaverage pay of £44 375.

Cyclists, cricketers and rowersalso fared well, while those whoengaged in football, rugby,lacrosse, squash and netballranked further down the pay scale.

The study, conducted by

Opinion Matters, found that thosewho had taken part in organisedsport between two and four timesa month since childhood earnedon average just under £35 000.

Over an average 47-year career,researchers found that the differ-ence between playing regularorganised sports and not takingpart amounted to about £522 000.

The benefits gained in theworkplace included good com-munication skills, better team-work and improved confidence,the study found. – Daily Mail

Playing team sport is good for salary as well as healthYou can write, fax or e-mail a letter to:The Editor, Business Report, PO Box1014, Johannesburg 2000Fax: (011) 838-2693e-mail: brletters@inl.co.zaInclude daytime telephone numbers and full address.Pseudonyms are not acceptable.The editor reserves the right to edit or reject lettersDIRECT ENQUIRES TO:JHB NEWSDESK 011 633 2484You can send feedback, complaints orsuggestions to:e-mail: br.editor@inl.co.za

❚❚ CONTACT

Busani Bafana

CHINA’SECONOMIC TIES

Volker Stanzel

❚❚QUOTE OF THE DAYI believe life is a series of near misses.A lot of what we ascribe to luck is not luck at all. Itis seizing the day and accepting responsibility for your future. – Howard Schultz, American businesman

A woman harvests beans high in iron in Rwanda. Farmers using this variety areharvesting more yields per hectare and selling the surplus. PHOTO: HARVESTPLUS

Shippingcontainers sitstacked amonggantry cranes atthe Kwai TsingContainerTerminals inHong Kong thisweek. China hasintense economic relationshipswith countries allover the globe.

PHOTO: BLOOMBERG