What must be done to get toxin out of Kenya’s food supply

Close-up of Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus producer of aflatoxins in corn.
KOOKLE/Shutterstock

Vivian Hoffmann, The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

An exposé in Kenya has revealed that there are high amounts of a poisonous substance, known as aflatoxin, in many of Kenya’s popular maize flour brands. This is particularly worrying as maize flour is a staple food for most Kenyans. Part of the problem is in how maize is processed and distributed in the country. Vivian Hoffmann shares her insights on this and what must be done to prevent it.

What are aflatoxins and how do they get into our food?

Aflatoxins are toxic chemicals produced by a fungus, Aspergillus flavus. The fungus occurs naturally in soils, but under hot, dry conditions, it can grow and spread to a variety of crops. Maize and groundnut are two crops that are especially susceptible to contamination with aflatoxins.

While aflatoxin is a known carcinogen, and can be fatal to people in large doses, some of the other potential health impacts of consuming moderate amounts of aflatoxin over long periods of time are less well understood.

The amount of harvest that’s affected by aflatoxins varies each year, depending on the weather. Either too little rain during cultivation (which weakens the crops’ natural defences against fungal infection), or too much around harvest (which makes it difficult to dry the crops before storage), can lead to higher aflatoxin.

Poor plant nutrition is also a risk factor because, like drought conditions, it weakens crops and makes then susceptible to being colonised by fungus.

The fungus can continue to grow on crops if they’re not properly stored (and moisture gets in), or if they’re not well dried. In Kenya, maize stored by smallholder farmers has been found to be far more contaminated than purchased maize and is the most likely culprit for the outbreaks of aflatoxin poisoning that occur from time to time.

It’s not a uniquely Kenyan challenge. Aflatoxin contamination occurs in almost all countries. A non-exhaustive list of other aflatoxin hotspots includes the Southern US, Guatemala, parts of China, and India.

What is being done to try to address this issue and what’s not working

In Kenya, many food processing companies test inputs – like maize – before buying to avoid aflatoxin contamination in their products. But accurate testing is difficult because there is a lot of variation in aflatoxin across bags of maize, and even grains within a bag.

Under Kenyan law, maize that contains more than 10 parts per billion total aflatoxins, and groundnut above 15 parts per billion aflatoxin, cannot legally be sold. But testing procedures are not regulated.

On top of this, testing for aflatoxin at the factory gate doesn’t really solve the problem. When a consignment of maize or groundnut is rejected by one company, it is simply sold to a company with less stringent requirements, or on the informal market. This means the lowest-cost food is often the most contaminated, and people with the least to spend are at greatest risk of eating unsafe food.

In my ongoing research, I’ve found that a great deal of maize consumed in Kenya is never even tested for aflatoxin. This is because it’s either bought on the informal market, or consumed by those who have grown it.

Are there any steps that the public can take to avoid consuming them?

The International Food Policy Research Institute’s research on maize flour in Kenya has shown that more expensive brands are more likely to be compliant with the aflatoxin standard. Buying higher-priced maize flour is one way to protect yourself.

Also, if you grow your own maize or groundnut, dry your crops thoroughly while preventing contact with the soil, and store them in a clean, dry place.

Processed foods containing groundnut (also known as peanut) are usually more contaminated than whole nuts. This is probably because visibly damaged nuts are more likely to contain aflatoxin, and the best nuts are sold whole rather than processed. Grinding your own peanut butter from high-quality nuts is one way to avoid aflatoxin in this food.

Finally, one of the most important things you can do to avoid aflatoxin is to eat a balanced diet and avoid over-reliance on maize and groundnut.

What needs to happen next?

More resources are needed to deal with aflatoxin contamination at its root, which is on the farm.

The Kenyan government recently announced plans to spend Ksh 200 million on Aflasafe, an aflatoxin-control product that farmers apply to crops while they are still in the field. This is excellent news, but it’s extremely important that farmers are trained on how to correctly apply it for the treatment to be effective.

Other practices, including drying crops on plastic sheets, removing visibly mouldy or damaged crops prior to storage, and storing well-dried crops in hermetic bags, are also very effective at reducing aflatoxin. Plastic sheeting is available for around 400 KSh (about US$4) for a 15m2 piece, and can last multiple seasons, making it one of the most cost-effective solutions available.

There also needs to be a change in Kenya’s aflatoxin regulation to legalise the use of contaminated grain for specific non-food uses. The East African Standard for maize, which Kenya follows, requires all maize to meet the same aflatoxin limit, regardless of its use.

Since very little aflatoxin passes from feed into meat, crops that are considered unsafe for human consumption can be safely used as feed for animals to be slaughtered for meat. Many countries, including the US and EU members, allow higher levels – up to 30 times the Kenyan limit – in feed consumed by meat animals. Allowing food that exceeds the aflatoxin limit for human consumption to be fed to meat animals is a way to get this poison out of the food supply.

Vivian Hoffmann, Research economist, The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Article in The Star is a shining example of how not to report on food safety

The Star newspaper published a feature article titled How safe is your sukuma wiki? in its 13 May 2019 issue. The article describes “an investigation by The Star” (?!) after “intensive testing” of samples of sukuma wiki (kale) from five open-air food markets and two supermarkets in Nairobi.

My initial reaction was: Since when did the Star’s journalists become food safety researchers?  Who exactly designed and carried out this study?

The article says that kale samples were collected from five open-air markets and two supermarkets in Nairobi and tested at the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service and Analabs (a private laboratory) for the presence of heavy metals (lead, mercury, iron, copper and cadmium).

But who collected the vegetable samples? How many samples were collected in total? How many samples from each market? What analytical methods were used? In short: what are the details of the research design? The Star article does not say!

Surprisingly, despite these gaps, the article goes ahead to cite figures of mercury content in the vegetables. But the question is: how does one make sense of a statement like “the level of mercury in kales from Kariobangi market was 0.11 mg per kilo” [note, “mg per kilo” instead of the correct format mg/kg or parts per million] and yet there is no mention of or link to the research protocols?

Is the reported value of 0.11 mg/kg the mean mercury content of sukuma wiki from Kariobangi (n = ?) and if so, what is the margin of error? Were the reported differences in heavy metal contamination between markets statistically significant? Impossible to say with the information at hand!

Nonetheless, the Star article boldly declares that “you are better off buying sukuma wiki from your local market than at a supermarket” yet there is no credible empirical evidence leading to this conclusion!

Research conclusions are only as valid as the methods used to derive them. If the methods are questionable, the conclusions will not be valid.

This article by the Star is a shining example to media houses of how not to report on food safety research. Journalists should not purport to be food safety researchers. Journalism is journalism. Food science is food science. Food scientists carry out research and publish their research findings in peer-reviewed journals. It is the work of journalists to study and interpret those technical findings and report them in their newspapers a format that is easily understood by non-specialist audiences.

If the Star journalists had taken the trouble to search online, they would have discovered several recently published peer-reviewed studies on microbial and heavy metal contamination of vegetables in Nairobi. These studies have been led by scientists from the University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, among other notable research institutions. The Star journalists should simply have reported on these research studies instead of creating their own “investigation”.

Dear journalists: You don’t just walk into Naivas and Nakumatt supermarkets and Gikomba, Githurai, Kangemi, Kariobangi and Marikiti markets, buy a bunch of sukuma wiki from each site, take your sukuma wiki bunches to a lab for testing of heavy metals and then report some “mg per kilo” figures as credible results of an “investigative report” on the safety of sukuma wiki sold in the city of Nairobi.

Your alarmist reporting may cause anxiety among some of your readers but you will not be taken seriously by those who understand what research design is all about.

#CholeraInNairobi: Informal food system should not have to pay the price for failure of formal system

For about three months now, there has been an active outbreak of cholera in Kenya. Cholera, a foodborne illness caused by eating food or drinking water contaminated with Vibrio cholerae, is associated with poor sanitation and lack of clean water, conditions that are prevalent in slums and informal settlements. For this reason, cholera is often considered to be “a disease of the poor”.

However, the recent outbreak has seen cholera arrive at the doorsteps of the “rich”, with incidents reported in up-market places in Nairobi.

In May 2017, one person died and five were admitted in hospital with clinically confirmed cholera after eating contaminated food at a wedding reception in the high-end leafy suburbs of Karen.

In June 2017, cholera came knocking at the door of the 4-star Weston Hotel, reportedly owned by Deputy President William Ruto. The hotel was the venue of a four-day scientific conference attended by some 500 doctors. By the second day of the conference, there were online media reports of participants taken ill with cholera symptoms after eating packed lunch containing fish. As many as 50 people were hospitalised and treated for cholera.

Now, barely one month after #CholeraAtWeston, several top government officials from the Trade and the Treasury ministries [including the respective Cabinet Secretaries] got cholera after eating contaminated lunch served at the Kenya Trade Forum held on 17-19 July 2017 at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre [whose managing director happens to be President Uhuru Kenyatta’s niece].

So far, Nairobi County has recorded 336 cholera cases and 3 deaths since May 2017. The Ministry of Health has now responded with a raft of measures, including a ban on hawking of food countrywide. Health certificates for food handlers have also been cancelled across the country and county health departments ordered to carry out fresh medical examination and certification of food handlers within 21 days.

Seemingly, it had to take two Cabinet Secretaries contracting cholera in the course of duty for the Ministry of Health to act. But one wonders why ‘informal’ food sellers in vibanda [food stalls] and hawkers selling boiled eggs and Smokie sausages—who have not been implicated in the recent cholera outbreaks—must pay the price for the failure of Weston Hotel and KICC management to maintain food safety assurance systems.

An evidence-based, scientific approach is needed in managing food safety and public health. Government denials to protect political interests and draconian policy statements will not do.

Of hydrogen peroxide in hawked milk and fake yoghurt

Last month (April 2016), the subject of milk safety featured in the print media yet again with two interesting reports from Nakuru County.

In the first case, unscrupulous milk traders and hawkers were reportedly adding hydrogen peroxide to raw milk in an attempt to prolong its shelf life [a somewhat jua kali attempt at reactivating the lactoperoxidase system, a recognized method of extending the shelf life of raw milk for up to 8 hours that is promoted by FAO where cooling of milk is not feasible though not authorized for use in Kenya].

In the second case, the Ministry of Health reportedly busted a syndicate involved in processing, packaging and sale of ‘fake’ yoghurt (‘fake’ because it apparently did not contain any milk but was made from a cornflour base).

The Kenya Dairy Board has consistently waged war against informal sector milk hawkers and traders, branding the milk they sell as “unsafe” and calling on Kenyans to opt for “safe” processed, packaged milk from the formal sector.

Well, these two recent incidents from Nakuru serve to illustrate one key research finding from the International Livestock Research Institute:

Raw milk sold in the informal sector is not necessarily unsafe and processed, packaged milk sold in the formal sector is not necessarily safe.

These incidents also reinforce the importance of adopting a holistic, risk-based approach to the management of milk safety, regardless of whether the product is sold in the informal or formal sector.

The key questions to be tackled are: what are the risks associated with the milk and what actions should traders/processors/consumers take to reduce or eliminate the risks and thus ensure milk safety?

These questions should be answered in a systematic way within the framework of risk analysis which involves three main activities: risk assessment, risk management and risk communication.

Training is an important component of risk management and it’s encouraging to note that the Kenya Dairy Board has said that it plans to train hawkers countrywide on milk safety and issue them with licences to sell milk.

Some may question the capacity of the Kenya Dairy Board to implement such a program sustainably but it is a step in the right direction.

I’ll keep watching the media space for more developments.

Daily Nation article on toxins in Nairobi foods raises more questions than answers

Today’s Daily Nation (11 Jan 2016) features an article entitled Tests show dangerous levels of toxins in foods sold in Nairobi. My immediate reaction upon reading the article was, quite frankly, disappointment at the shallow coverage of such an important topic as food safety. In fact, the article as it stands is quite alarmist and has a lot of loose ends.

I expected the Daily Nation article to be based on research evidence published in a peer-reviewed journal so I hoped there would be some mention of where the research was published or, at the very least, a link to the study. Alas! No such reference was provided.

By providing information on where the research was published [assuming, of course, that it was indeed published in a peer-reviewed journal], an interested reader would be able to cross-check the details and delve further into specifics of the research protocol, such as, how the sampling was done, the specific analytical tests and so on.

One would then be able to conclude whether the tested food samples were representative (results of the sample can be generalized to the entire population of milk, vegetables, fruits etc. sold in the whole of Nairobi, for example) or non-representative (in which case the results would be specific to the market, supermarket or residential estate from which the samples were collected).

The headline [Tests show dangerous levels of toxins in foods sold in Nairobi] suggests that tests were carried out and the results showed that levels of specific foodborne toxins were “dangerous”. However, nowhere in the article are the levels of the foodborne toxins mentioned.

In fact, one may be tempted to ask: What is a ‘dangerous’ level of a foodborne toxin as opposed to a ‘non-dangerous’ level of the same? If the levels of the toxin are not quantified and reported, then how do we know they are ‘dangerous’?

Sub-editors, who are responsible for writing headlines of newspaper articles, would do well to stick to the facts of the story and avoid such alarmist headlines. That said, the story itself needs to cover the facts adequately.

Instead of providing details of the levels of foodborne toxins found, the writer merely cites six professionals who mostly comment on the negative health impacts of some chemical hazards.

It’s not readily clear if these six individuals were part of the study (or studies) that tested the various samples of food products or if the writer was only interested in capturing expert opinions, perhaps to lend an air of credibility to the story.

A statement like “To make matters worse for Nairobi residents, non-packet milk sample tests by Kenyatta University nutrition students revealed higher-than-recommended amounts of hydrogen peroxide — used as a preservative — and formalin, also used to preserve bodies in mortuaries” is not very helpful from the risk communication point of view and is actually quite alarmist, not least because we don’t have the full information on the research protocol that the students used.

Clearly, the Daily Nation writer and sub-editor chose to angle this story with a focus on hazards rather than on risks.

However, if you look for hazards in food, you will find them. Hazard-based approaches to food safety management have since paved way to risk-based approaches which are more pragmatic.

Likewise, when food safety communication focuses on risks rather than on hazards, the focus is more on what actions consumers can take in order to reduce or eliminate foodborne risks.

In this way, one is able to avoid the often alarmist, hazard-based reporting which invariably has the effect of leaving consumers overly anxious and even scared of eating certain food products.

Food safety: The theme of World Health Day 2015

World Health Day is celebrated on 7 April every year to mark the day when the World Health Organization was founded in 1948. Each year, a theme is selected to highlight a priority area of public health. This year, the global theme was food safety, with the slogan “From farm to plate, make food safe”.

On World Health Day 2015, The Standard carried a two-page supplement by the Ministry of Health to create awareness on the four most common foodborne diseases in Kenya: cholera, typhoid, aflatoxicosis and brucellosis.

             

Later, the Sunday Nation carried a vox pop feature in its Young Nation section that is targeted at children. I was quite pleased to note that the pupils who were interviewed seemed to be well aware of how to ensure that the food they eat is safe.

Food poisoning incident at Strathmore University leaves 25 hospitalized

On Wednesday 25 March 2015, The Standard reported an incident of food poisoning at Strathmore University following a dinner organized for Fourth Year students the previous Friday at the university’s auditorium. There were 80 reported cases and 25 students were hospitalized. Catering services had been outsourced for the event and the university reported that investigations had been launched to establish the cause of the food poisoning.

The university had earlier issued a status update on the incident via Twitter:

STATUS UPDATE: Official Communication from Strathmore University http://t.co/N57BxRq4zQ #StrathmoreUniversity pic.twitter.com/CU5yeDCjnT

— StrathmoreUniversity (@StrathU) March 24, 2015

The Daily Nation story was more detailed and included interviews with some of the hospitalized students as well as a doctor at Nairobi West Hospital who attended to some of the affected students.

However, neither report mentions the name of the catering service provider. This incident would make for a very useful case study.  It would be very interesting to trace the actual source of the contamination. It’s a pity that we don’t have comprehensive documentation of food contamination cases in Kenya.

Featured publication: Food Safety and Informal Markets

The February-March 2015 issue of CTA’s bi-monthly magazine Spore highlights a new book on food safety and informal markets as the main featured publication. The book, Food Safety and Informal Markets: Animal Products in Sub-Saharan Africa, is edited by my ILRI colleagues Kristina Roesel and Delia Grace and was launched on 27 January 2015 at ILRI’s headquarters in Nairobi.

Below is the review by Spore.

In sub-Saharan Africa, informal markets are the dominant sales route for meat, milk, eggs and processed foods made from animal products. Conventional thinking tends to regard such markets as food safety hotspots, owing to their lack of health and safety regulation, their tendency to operate outside taxation and licensing systems, and their use of traditional processing methods. However, the authors of this new publication call for a reappraisal of food safety in informal markets, based on information gathered from 25 case studies.

An important theme to emerge is the need to focus on risks rather than hazards. For instance, current systems to assess food safety would likely identify the high levels of bacteria in Kenya’s informally-marketed fresh milk as a dangerous hazard that merits tougher enforcement of safety standards. In reality, however, risks to human health from this milk are very low, as it is normal for families to boil milk before drinking it. This is also an example of how culture is a vital determinant of food safety, which means that simply providing information may not be enough to change food safety behaviour.

Other lessons from the case studies include the findings that traditional, informally sold foods often have no worse compliance with food standards than food sold in the formal sector, that traditional processing methods can be surprisingly effective at controlling risks, and that food safety problems are most often best solved through stakeholder engagement and incentives, rather than regulation and enforcement.

If you are a subscriber to CTA publications and have an account with them, you can use your credit points to order a copy of the book. Alternatively, you can purchase the book from the publisher.

Edit update (24 July 2015): The nine-month embargo on full-text access to the book is over. You may now access the PDF of the book at http://hdl.handle.net/10568/42438

Study evaluates the microbial quality of aircraft food at JKIA Nairobi

Have you ever thought about the microbiological quality of aircraft food? I recently read an article in the journal Science Research on a study that evaluated the microbiological quality of meals served on aircraft at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), Nairobi, Kenya.

It was a descriptive cross-sectional study that analyzed 361 samples of meals along the food production chain, under the following four categories:

1. starter dishes that involve a lot of handling during preparation and are usually served without heating or reheating;
2. main courses served hot;
3. cold desserts; and
4. snacks and sandwiches.

The microorganisms in the foods were isolated, identified and enumerated. The sensitivity of the isolated microorganisms was also investigated. In addition to the microbial analysis, the study assessed the food safety and hygiene knowledge, attitudes and practices of the staff involved in preparing the aircraft meals.

A total of 340 bacterial species were isolated. Worryingly, these included a number of pathogenic and coliform bacteria. Coliforms like E. coli are indicator organisms. Their natural habitat is the lower intestinal tract of humans so their presence in food is an indication of faecal contamination and, thus, poor hygiene.

Not surprisingly, hot meals were less contaminated than cold meals (mostly starters), but the presence of E. coli in both hot and cold meals suggests poor hygiene during food handling and, possibly, that the hot meals are contaminated after heating.

Cooked beef products were the most contaminated category of hot meals (59.3%), followed by vegetables (28.8%), chicken (10.2%) and pork products (1.7%). Most of the isolated bacteria (81.8%) were resistant to Ampicillin, an antibiotic that is used to treat a variety of bacterial infections.

Based on the findings of microbial analysis, it was not surprising to read the results of the food safety knowledge, attitudes and practice of the food handlers. Although the majority (88.8%) of food handlers had completed secondary education or had a college diploma, 56.3% of them had not been trained on food hygiene.

“An important finding from this study was that the concept of HACCP [Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point] was not understood,” the authors observed.

HACCP is a quality assurance approach that focuses on evaluating the quality of the product along the various stages of the production chain and taking remedial action as needed to eliminate the hazard (e.g. pathogenic bacteria), as opposed waiting to analyse the product at the final stage of production, at which point it may be too late – and too costly – to take corrective action.

However, knowledge about food safety doesn’t automatically translate into good hygienic practice. The management of a food processing unit needs to enforce good hygiene practice not only by training and refresher courses for food handlers and providing the necessary facilities but by actively encouraging and rewarding good practice.

The study found that despite the presence of proper handwashing facilities (sinks with sensor taps, soap and hot and cold water), 87.8% of respondents said that they never washed their hands upon entering the production area, 8.1% rarely washed their hands and 4.1% sometimes washed their hands. Further, 76.1% of respondents said they never changed their gloves for the duration of their work shift, 19.8% changed their gloves rarely and just 4.1% said they always changed their gloves during their shift.

The study does not indicate the number of meals prepared per given period at the JKIA food unit so it is not possible to estimate what proportion the 361 sampled meals represent relative to the total number of meals prepared in a given period.

Convenient and purposive sampling was used in the study. This means that the 361 meals did not constitute a representative sample of all meals prepared in the unit. For this reason, it is not possible to generalize the findings of this study. Nonetheless, the results of the study show that there is need to improve the hygienic practices of the food handlers who were interviewed so as to avoid bacterial contamination and improve the safety of the meals they prepare.

Reference

Maina, T.S.N., Kamau, L., Kabiru, E.W., Ogata, B.R. and Shitandi A. 2013. Evaluation of Bacteriological Quality of Aircraft Food at The Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi, Kenya. Science Research 1(1): 1-8. doi: 10.11648/j.sr.20130101.11

Researchers tackle aflatoxins for safer maize and milk products in Kenya

Mycotoxins are poisonous metabolites produced by various species of moulds. Aflatoxins are cancer-causing mycotoxins produced by the mould Aspergillus flavus. Aspergillus can grow in a wide range of foods and feed and thrives under favourable growth conditions of high temperature and moisture content.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that 25% of the world’s food crops are affected by aflatoxins, with countries in the tropics and subtropics at most risk. In Africa, aflatoxin contamination of cereals, groundnuts and dried fruits leads to an estimated annual loss to food exporters of US$ 670 million.

Consumption of very high levels of aflatoxins can cause acute illness and death. Chronic exposure to aflatoxins is linked to liver cancer, especially where hepatitis is prevalent, and this is estimated to cause as many as 26,000 deaths annually in sub-Saharan Africa. Exposure to aflatoxins has been associated with stunting in children, as well as suppression of the immune system.

Aflatoxin contamination can occur before crops are harvested when temperatures are high, during harvest if wet conditions occur and after harvest if there is insect damage to the stored crop or if moisture levels are high during storage and transportation.

Aflatoxins in contaminated animal feed not only result in reduced animal productivity, but can also end up in milk, meat and eggs, thus presenting a health risk to humans. Of these animal-source food products, milk has the greatest risk because relatively large amounts of aflatoxin are carried over and milk is consumed especially by infants.

Kenya is the country with the highest incidence of acute aflatoxin toxicity possibly ever documented. The first recorded outbreak of aflatoxicosis in Kenya took place in 1981. The country’s most severe aflatoxicosis outbreak occurred in Eastern Province in 2004, resulting in 317 cases and 125 deaths.

Since 2004, outbreaks among subsistence farmers have recurred annually in Eastern Province. During the outbreak that occurred in 2010, the levels of aflatoxin-B1 in serum in Kenya were among the highest ever recorded in the world.

The Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is involved in research to tackle the problem of aflatoxin contamination in Kenya. From 2012, ILRI has been leading a collaborative research project that aims to reduce the risk of mycotoxins in the feed-dairy value chain in Kenya so as to improve food safety and safeguard the health of consumers of maize and dairy products.

To achieve this goal, the project is developing cost-effective and incentive-based mycotoxin control strategies and solutions for use by poor farmers and other actors within the feed-dairy chain.

The main project activities are:

• Risk assessment of the Kenyan feed-dairy chain to identify the best control options and provide risk managers with information for decision-making.
• Assessment of the economic costs of aflatoxins in Kenya’s dairy value chain and examination of the cost effectiveness of mitigation strategies.
• Investigation of technologies and strategies to reduce mycotoxins risk in the feed-dairy chain.
• Impact assessment of a package of post-harvest strategies for reducing aflatoxins in maize.
• Dissemination of evidence and building capacity of local researchers and postgraduate students through participation in designing surveys, fieldwork and data analysis.

In addition, the project applies participatory methods to develop and test strategies to mitigate the risk of mycotoxins in the feed-dairy chain. These participatory methods engage farmers in action research on their fields so they can learn and adopt new technologies and disseminate the knowledge to other farmers.

The other project partners are ACDI/VOCA, AgriFood Research Finland, the International Food Policy Research Institute, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Rakuno Gakuen University in Japan and the University of Nairobi. The three-year project funded by the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs ends in July 2015.