Five years of supporting Sahelian food businesses towards affordable nutritious products: key lessons learnt from Project Meriem
From 2018 to 2023, together with French NGO Gret and a consortium of partners, the Hystra team co-led the design and implementation of the Meriem project, a 5-year effort to develop commercial solutions to prevent malnutrition in urban areas of the Sahel region, supported jointly by the French Development Agency and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In the capital and secondary cities of Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali, our team worked with businesses among the regional and national leaders to get everyday food products on the market that are:
Formulated to deliver specific nutritional benefits targeted at infants from 6-24 months of age, and women of reproductive age
Priced so that low and medium-income populations are able to purchase them often enough to make a signficant difference to their nutritional intake.
The Meriem project supported these businesses every step of the way from product design to marketing plan through production and brand strategy. Several members of the Hystra team were posted in the Sahel for periods ranging from a few weeks to over a year. The Meriem team's work resulted in half a dozen affordable fortified products launched for pilots or at scale.
Despite challenging working conditions due to regional political instability, the COVID pandemic and the impact of the Ukraine war on global supply chains, two of these products are still on the market in Burkina Faso and Niger. From our successes and failures, we have formalized our learnings on the development, production, sale and marketing of locally fortified foods, with the objective to help drive local food markets towards better nutrition at less cost, in the Sahel and beyond.
Key publications
Launching fortified infant flour in the Sahel Region: lessons and future opportunities - Synthesis note (English) (2024)
Facteurs clefs pour la production et commercialisation d’aliments fortifiés au Sahel - Note de synthèse (French) (Gret et Hystra, 2024)
Apprentissages de Meriem sur les modalités / Démarches d’appui aux entreprises pour développer et commercialiser des produits rentables ciblés visant à prévenir la malnutrition - Note de synthèse (French) (Gret et Hystra, 2023)
Complementary documents on specific aspects of the project are available on our partner Gret's webpage (only in French), including deep-dives into:
Communication campaign for fortified infant flour Super Léo, developed as part of Project Meriem, in Burkina Faso (Gret)