Can potatoes help to counter climate-fueled hunger in Africa?
By Madalitso Wills Kateta // 26 April 2023
Eddy Ouko, a potato farmer from Jimo location in western Kenya, understands how climate change affects global food systems. The 49-year-old father of four, who has been growing potatoes on his three-acre piece of land for the past 15 years, says amid the changing climate patterns, potatoes have been an important source of nutrition.
Ouko, who grows orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, told Devex that this variety of potatoes is, apart from being drought-tolerant and early-maturing, very rich in vitamin A, and offers his family insurance when staple cereals such as maize and sorghum fail.
"With potato farming, we are less worried about drought, all we worry about sometimes is scarcity of the vines for planting," he said.
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About the author
Madalitso Wills KatetaMadatso_Kateta
Madalitso Wills Kateta is a Malawi-based Devex contributing reporter. He specializes in gender, human rights, climate change, politics, and global development reporting. He has written for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, The New Humanitarian, African Arguments, Equal Times, and others.
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