Participatory cooking demonstrations stimulate
demand for and consumption of healthy diets
among livestock pastoralists in Kenya
Esther Omosa, George Wamwere and Adan Kutu
4 International Conference on Global Food Security 2020, 4-7 December 2020
International Livestock Research Institute

Background
USAID- Accelerated Value chain development (AVCD) program
5-Year Feed the Future Program, in 21/47 counties in Kenya
The livestock value chain, implemented by ILRI in 5 counties
Arid and Semi arid lands of Northern Kenya
Pastoralists (on the
move- water and pasture)
Low fruits & vegetable
intake, rely on animal
sourced Foods
Frequent shocks (drought,
livestock diseases, floods, locusts)
Poor communication and road
network
High illiteracy levels (80% women)

AVCD Interventions to increased Food access to pastoralist
• Natural resource Management (PRM toolkit)
Grazing plans
• Animal disease surveillance
Community disease reporting for
timely response
• Market information
Trade facilitation
Increased Income

Intervention: Nutrition Education
Social behaviour
change
communication
used Socio
ecological model
Used community
dialogue cards
and participatory
cooking
Cooking demonstrations
enable learning through
various avenues

Why Participatory cooking
● Low knowledge levels- preparation
● Learning through action
● Low production of vegetables
● Perception towards certain foods
● Markets can respond to demand

Findings
❖ Minimum Dietary Diversity
was 53%
❖ 245 of the 460 women of
reproductive age interviewed
consumed at least 5/10 food
groups
❖ There was a consistent
positive trend with nutrition
messaging (2016- 2020)

Conclusions
❖ Nutrition education has potential to change dietary behaviour
❖ Participatory cooking-learning through actions can motivate
change in dietary practices
❖ Opportunity to change behaviour can be enhanced by
utilization of existing/local material

This presentation is licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.
better lives through livestock
ilri.org
ILRI thanks all donors and organizations who globally supported its work through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund