New study on food and nutrition security among women and children in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

EAT ADDIS is a five-year interdisciplinary research project in human geography that aims to give a broad overview of the food and nutrition security, the nutrition transition and changing dietary habits in Addis Ababa and their social disparities.

Researchers are participating from Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala University, Lund University, Addis Continental Institute of Public Health and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The project shows that poor diets and stunting among pre-school children still remain pressing issues and have strong social gradient. The researchers were also surprised to find a poor nutritional status in the mothers of the pre-schoolers and overweight problems of a proportion they did not expect.

“It was quite shocking that the overweight and obesity problem among the mothers was so significant,” says Hanna Berhane, researcher at Addis Continental Institute of Public Health, who has been coordinating the field activities of the project.

Read the full interview with Hanna Berhane and her colleagues Eva-Charlotte Ekström, professor in global nutrition at Uppsala University, who is the project’s principal investigator (PI) and Beatrix Alsanius, professor in horticulture at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). You find the story on the SIANI (Swedish International Agriculture Network Initiative) webpage.

Study on food and nutrition security among women and children in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - SIANI

EAT ADDIS – What’s to eat? Women, children and the urban food environment: the case of Addis Ababa is a five-year research project in human geography funded by the government research council for sustainable development, Formas (2016-00272) with contributions from Addis Continental Institute of Public health, Uppsala University, Lund University and Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences. The project finished in the autumn of 2022.

Written by: Teresia Borgman