Enviro News Asia, Nairobi — A new partnership between FoodBanking Kenya (FBK) and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT is transforming surplus food into a tool for improving nutrition and food security among vulnerable communities in Kenya. The initiative aims to reduce food loss and waste while ensuring that nutritious food reaches children, schools, and low-income households instead of ending up in landfills.
The collaboration, launched under the CGIAR Better Diets and Nutrition Science Program, addresses a growing challenge in Kenya’s food system. Large quantities of fruits and vegetables arriving daily at Nairobi’s informal markets are often lost before consumption due to inadequate storage, transportation constraints, market oversupply, and limited infrastructure. At the same time, many vulnerable populations struggle to access healthy and balanced diets.
According to project partners, food loss is not only an economic issue but also a significant nutritional concern. Many of the discarded foods contain essential nutrients such as vitamin A, iron, zinc, and calcium, which are critical for healthy growth, immune function, and child development.
FoodBanking Kenya has been working to address this challenge by recovering safe-to-eat surplus food from markets and redistributing it to institutions and communities in need. Through structured food donation systems and digital coordination platforms, including FoodiVerse, food that would otherwise be wasted is redirected to support vulnerable groups.
The new pilot project seeks to move beyond measuring the quantity of food rescued by evaluating its nutritional impact. Researchers will test a nutrition-sensitive digital monitoring system capable of tracking food donations from the point of collection to their final use in beneficiary institutions.
Instead of broadly recording categories such as fruits or vegetables, the system will capture detailed information on specific food items, including spinach, carrots, bananas, and cabbages, as well as quantities received and consumed. The collected information will be linked to Kenya’s Food Composition Tables to estimate nutrient contributions, including vitamin A, iron, zinc, calcium, calories, and other essential nutrients.
The initiative will also assess dietary diversity, food utilization, food waste, seasonal food availability, food safety, and economic savings generated for participating institutions. Digital tools such as Open Data Kit (ODK) and automated data systems will support the collection and analysis of information while minimizing reporting burdens for beneficiary organizations.
The pilot will involve children’s homes, schools, community feeding programs, and other institutions serving vulnerable populations. Many of these organizations operate under financial constraints and depend on external food support to provide meals.
Project leaders believe the initiative demonstrates how food rescue can serve not only as an environmental intervention but also as an effective nutrition and public health strategy. By generating evidence on the nutritional value of rescued food, the project aims to improve food donation planning, strengthen nutrition-sensitive food systems, support policy development, and expand food rescue models across Kenya and beyond.
As climate change, rising food prices, and urban food insecurity continue to challenge communities, the partnership highlights the importance of maximizing existing food resources. The initiative seeks to show that reducing hunger does not always require producing more food, but rather making better use of the food already available. (*)
