Role of government in promoting community-based nutrition programs : experience from Tanzania and lessons for Africa

This monograph describes and summarizes an extremely successful community-based nutrition program that has greatly reduced malnutrition among preschoolers in the Iringa region of Tanzania. Drawing on these experiences, it identifies the government"s role in promoting such programs and extract lessons for other African countries. The study concludes that the key component of the Iringa project which can be generalized is the "Triple A" process: each community must assess its own nutrition situation, analyze the causes of its problems, and take appropriate action based on available resources. Attempts to impose technology�based "magic bullets" that have been successful in other settings are likely to have disappointing results when applied without the necessary adaption. (Author abstract)