The project NaviNut “Enhancing women’s agency in navigating changing food environments to improve child nutrition in African drylands” (Sept 2020–Oct 2023, extended with additional budget to December 2024 and for final reporting to June 2025) took a transdisciplinary research approach: co-creating knowledge across different scientific disciplines and societal stakeholders.
The German Institute for Tropical and Subtropical Agriculture (DITSL) coordinated the work together with the Center for Research and Development in Drylands (CRDD, member of Prolinnova–Kenya); the University of Parakou (host organisation of Prolinnova–Benin) and the University of Abomey-Calavi in Benin; the Tropical Institute of Community Health and Development (TICH) and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) in Kenya; and South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences in Germany. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food & Agriculture (BMEL).
NaviNut investigated food systems in rural and peri-urban areas in the drylands of northern Kenya and northern Benin. It aimed to enhance women’s roles linked to human nutrition and health and strengthen their capacity to adapt to their changing food environments. It sought to identify and build on “positive deviance”: innovation by women who use locally available resources to feed their children better than do other women in the same area. It was designed to integrate the knowledge of mothers, processors and sellers of traditional foods, community health workers, consumers and various scientific disciplines.
The objectives of the action-research project were: a) to understand the complexity and dynamics of women’s decision-making in feeding their young children; b) to increase accessibility and desirability of locally available, highly nutritious, traditional food products; and c) to enhance women’s learning on child nutrition through co-innovation with other stakeholders. This included co-developing innovations in small-scale processing and packaging so that women could improve their livelihoods by producing and marketing healthy, safe, tasty and acceptable convenience foods based on traditional food products.
BMEL welcomed involvement within the Prolinnova network with a view to linking all NaviNut partners with our network and thus sustaining the participatory transdisciplinary approach in human nutrition. This project facilitated learning by university staff and students about how to engage in transdisciplinary research, in line with Prolinnova’s aim to integrate a participatory innovation approach into university education. Prolinnova provided methodological support in participatory innovation processes working together with women innovators.
In 2025, the NaviNut team completed the final report on the project, a final project summary and a list of NaviNut publications.
See also the NaviNut project page on the DITSL website.
