How to 'Enable Vegetable-rich Diets Environment in Mali'? An Analysis of Policies, Stakeholders, and Framings

To enhance healthy diets, food system policies should encourage and enable vegetable consumption. But in Mali, vegetable consumption is low and there is a need to understand the policy drivers of this. This study aims to analyze written food environment policies, and the perceptions of stakeholders around the challenges and policy priorities for enabling production and consumption of vegetables for healthy diets in Mali. Through a three-pronged qualitative approach, a document review of existing written policies; a stakeholders’ NetMap workshop which gathered 15 participants; and 20 stakeholders’ in-depth interviews were carried out and analyzed and synthesized through multiple steps. The results showed that many policies have been designed and implemented for food system improvement in Mali. These policies are mostly from governmental initiatives under the Ministry of Rural Development, with the financial support of donors. They are mostly oriented toward agricultural product supply in terms of quantity (availability) and on improving social protection, equity, and livelihoods, but with little attention paid to quality. Policy challenges include weak or no impact on high post-harvest losses, high use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, poor quality of the water used for vegetable production in the cities, and the lack of food marketing and promotion issues. These latter are worsened by weak adaptation strategies to climate change and the effects of insecurity in the north of the country, which has drawn most of the policy and investment focus during recent years. The study recommends creation of a specific policy targeting vegetable production and consumption through a food system lens, with a focus on pesticide and fertilizer regulation mechanism; post-harvest losses reduction; irrigation facilities promotion; and food marketing and promotion to positively impact vegetable rich diets environment.