• by IPS Correspondents (bamako)
• Monday, July 23, 2012
• Inter Press Service

BAMAKO, Jul 23 (IPS) - Millet has become the basic ingredient for an enriched flour at the heart of an effort to establish a local, sustainable response to malnutrition in Mali.

Several of the children in Abala camp are visibly malnourished, and NGO workers are concerned about potential epidemics. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

In the city of Kati, some 15 kilometres from the capital, Bamako, a dozen women are busy processing locally-grown grain into “Misola”. The Misola initiative, created by a French association of the same name, is a public health project which aims to reduce infant malnutrition.

“We buy millet, the basic ingredient for the enriched flour we produce, from grain merchants here in the city,” said Ramata Traoré, who manages the Kati production facility. The flour is made up of 60 percent millet, 20 percent soya, and 10 percent groundnuts. Vitamins and mineral salts are added to this to produce a balanced food which responds to known nutritional deficiencies.

Demand for the flour is growing in Mali, following a poor harvest from the last growing season. Malnutrition is a serious problem in this semi-arid West African country, where food security has been badly affected by drought in recent years – a situation that has only been aggravated by a rebellion in the north.

In December, the Ministry of Agriculture said the country harvested just over five million tonnes of grain, against forecasts of eight million. “The ongoing food crisis increases the risk of malnutrition in several regions of Mali, including in Kayes (southwest), Koulikoro and Ségou (south),” said Aminata Sissoko, a nutrition specialist with the Malian Red Cross.

She added that the seizure of the three northern regions of Kidal, Timbuktu and Gao by Islamist groups and rebels from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) has only aggravated the situation.

“At this point, we have not been able to go into the areas controlled by the armed groups to evaluate needs. But we are assisting people displaced by the war with Misola flour,” Sissoko told IPS. One in five Malian children suffers from malnutrition, according to Abdoulaye Sangho, coordinator of the Mali chapter of Misola.

“We are an NGO which supports women producers of Misola flour,” Sangho told IPS. “Our objective is to improve the nutrition levels of the whole population, with a particular focus on children between the ages of six and 60 months, and pregnant and breastfeeding women.”

Mali’s first Misola production site was set up in 1993 at Diafarabé, in the central region of the country. The initiative expanded quickly, and today there are 19 small factories spread through all regions of the country except for Kidal, in the north. The project extends far beyond the country’s borders. Production of the enriched flour actually began in Burkina Faso in 1982, and the nutrition supplement is now also made in Senegal, Niger and Benin.

© Inter Press Service (2012) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service