Africa Harvest recognizes that poor and inadequate nutrition is the key reason for the increase in many non-communicable diseases such as kwashiorkor and anemia in Africa. Deficiencies in micronutrients are causing blindness, low birth weight, stunted growth, and impaired immunity. Lack of dietary iron causes anemia in half of Africa’s infants, while more than half a billion children in Africa die every year as a result of vitamin A deficiency.
To redress the malnutrition problem in the continent, Africa Harvest has selected to work on the widely consumed sorghum to unlock and enhance its nutritional potential through the multi-partner Africa Bio-fortified Sorghum project.

The project is researching ways of ensuring sorghum’s nutrients can be digested and used by the human body once consumed. It is also looking to add other nutrients, such as vitamin A, that are essential for proper growth and development using a technique referred to as bio-fortification.
Africa Harvest and partners drawn from seven reputed science organizations worldwide are seeking to improve the total nutritional value of sorghum so that when consumed it is a wholesome nutrition-packed food that will conquer malnutrition.
The partners in this project are South Africa’s Agricultural Research Council (ARC), Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the University of Pretoria. Others are Dupont’s subsidiary Pioneer Hi-Bred, the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the University of California Berkeley.

The project is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. It is one of 43 projects worldwide that constitute a global research effort aimed at delivering affordable technologies for improving health and nutrition in developing countries.
The global research effort, the Grand Challenges in Global Health, was announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2003 by Bill Gates.