Project:

The Sweetpotato Action for Security and Health in Africa (SASHA)

The Sweetpotato Action for Security and Health in Africa (SASHA) is a 5-year initiative designed to improve the food security and livelihoods of poor families in Sub-Saharan Africa by exploiting the untapped potential of sweetpotato.

Files

• SASHA Photo Contest 2011
• SASHA 2012 FLYERS
• SASHA 2011 FLYERS
• Partner Profiles
• Student Profiles
• Stories and logos
• Management
• Annual Meetings
• SASHA 2010 FLYERS

More information

The Sweetpotato Action for Security and Health in Africa (SASHA) is a 5-year initiative designed to improve the food security and livelihoods of poor families in Sub-Saharan Africa by exploiting the untapped potential of sweetpotato. It will develop the essential capacities, products, and methods to reposition sweetpotato in food economies of Sub-Saharan African countries to alleviate poverty and under nutrition, particularly among poor women and children.SASHA is a project of the International Potato Center (CIP). As part of the broader, 10-year, multi-donor Sweetpotato for Profit and Health Initiative, the SASHA project is expected to set the groundwork for improving the lives of 10 million Sub-Saharan households in 10 years.

Program components

IMPROVED QUALITY AND RANGE OF AVAILABLE VARIETIES

The focus of this component is on breeding a wide range of varieties with the combinations of traits suited to agro-ecological conditions and to consumer and producer demands. The point is to create an integrated breeding system akin to the one that exists for cereal breeding, but focused on the producer and consumer preferences of resource-poor women and children.

BREEDING WEEVIL-RESISTANT SWEETPOTATOES

This component draws on biotechnology to develop weevil-resistant sweetpotato varieties for Sub-Saharan Africa. Sweetpotato weevils are the most important sweetpotato pest in the world – responsible for crop losses ranging from 60 to nearly 100% during pronounced drought. This situation may be critical during dry periods when sweetpotato is sometimes the only food available. With climate change predictions of an expanding dry season in Sub-Saharan Africa, the urgency of developing resistance to weevils will likely intensify.

DEVELOPING SUSTAINABLE SEED SYSTEMS

The access to and maintenance of quality planting material is a struggle for smallholder farmers. This component involves developing and testing strategies to ensure effective multiplication, dissemination, and exchange of disease-free vines from which new plants will be propagated. It involves strategies to more efficiently link farmers with public sector distribution programs and integrate those with for-profit nurseries. It will examine which strategies assure women the best access to vines and whether women are as successful as men at commercially-oriented vine production.

PROOF-OF-CONCEPT PROJECTS

This series of projects will examine broader institutional or market level issues affecting crop production, markets, potential market expansion (e.g., use of sweetpotato as animal feed), and scalable approaches for improving nutrition with sweetpotato. These projects will evaluate options that influence the capacity to scale up and achieve the outcomes on poverty and nutrition that are planned for the years following SASHA, in the longer, ten-year initiative.