Francis Asiku’s plan to fight hunger in his village began, quite naturally, under a bountiful mango tree.
It was 2011, and he had just landed his first nursing job at Midigo Health Centre IV in Yumbe district in northern Uganda. He was excited and joyful.
But in his first month at work, Mr. Asiku was surprised to learn that what many infants and expectant mothers seeking care needed wasn’t necessarily medicine. It was nutritious food.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused on
As one community in northern Uganda struggles to feed its residents, jarred mangoes are turning out to provide “a ray of hope.”
He recalls one hot afternoon, in particular, when a young mother rushed into the health center with a 4-year-old child in her arms. Mr. Asiku hurried to help. He quickly diagnosed poor feeding as the root of the child’s problem.
“It was disturbing,” says Mr. Asiku, shaking his head in disbelief.
He headed home on a dirt road in the inky-dark evening. When he spotted birds feasting on rotting mangoes along his path, a question struck him: Why were so many people in his community malnourished when it experienced two plentiful mango seasons a year?
He raised the issue later that night with his younger brother, farmer Emmanuel Mao. Soon afterward, the brothers met with village elders under the huge mango tree where community meetings were held. That was the start of their nonprofit, The Mango Project, which distributes glass jars full of mangoes to schools, to health centers, and directly to hungry individuals.
“They were beaming”
The toll of hunger in Uganda is staggering, according to the Global Hunger Index, a report published by several global nonprofits. Almost 37% of the population is undernourished, and about one-quarter of children have stunting, a condition that is associated with malnutrition.
When Mr. Asiku and Mr. Mao met with the Midigo elders, he recalls having asked them, “Should we wait for the government to come to our rescue, and yet the situation keeps getting worse?” The answer was clear. The brothers needed to figure out a way to preserve Midigo’s abundant mangoes throughout dry periods, when they are scarce.
Yumbe’s first mango season starts in late April and lasts until July; the second runs from December to January. Most mangoes spoil because rural villagers lack refrigerators. Overall, 40% of Uganda’s harvests are lost due to poor preservation methods.
Mr. Asiku and Mr. Mao embarked on researching a simple way to preserve food. They began “jarrying” – cutting fruit pulp into thin slices and putting them in a glass container of boiling-hot water and sugar.
While canning is practiced throughout the world, many Midigo villagers can’t afford sugar, not to mention glass jars with secure lids. The relatively easy preservation method – and the brothers’ fundraising efforts to obtain the necessary supplies – delighted village elders.
“You could tell they were happy; they were beaming,” Mr. Mao recalls.
The brothers initially collected mangoes that were scattered throughout the village, but have since expanded their initiative to preserve the fruit from their family’s ancestral land. The jarred fruit is safe to eat for up to a year.
Mr. Asiku knows that the mangoes alone will not end malnutrition in the community, since humans need a balanced diet. But the initiative, he says, is a great start to breaking the hunger cycle in Midigo.
Nourishing body and mind
Mr. Asiku also conducts home visits and weekly seminars on nutrition. On a recent afternoon, he and his team of volunteers are arranging blue plastic chairs for villagers before the meeting.
One of the beneficiaries of The Mango Project is Mary. She is HIV positive and for the past year has not been able to work and properly feed her 4-year-old son, whom she is raising by herself. (She declined to have her last name published for this article for privacy reasons.)
As Mary looks on, Mr. Asiku pulls out a measuring tape for identifying malnutrition and wraps it around the arms of some of the children in attendance. He also speaks about the importance of eating leafy greens and fiber-rich fruits.
“It’s the health of my family that matters, and I thank The Mango Project for that,” Mary says. “Now I know how to take care of myself and my son.”
Irene Andruzu, who supervises one of the Midigo Health Centre’s facilities, says she receives at least 50 jars of mangoes monthly to help malnourished patients. During the pandemic alone, more than 12,000 jars of mangoes were distributed to health clinics and refugee settlements.
Scovia Anderu, a social worker for Calvary Chapel Midigo, lauds The Mango Project for instructing villagers. She says that most villagers lack knowledge about nutrition and that there are few qualified personnel who can educate them on the subject at the grassroots.
Zuberi Ojjo, the district health officer for Yumbe, sees the jarred mangoes as “a ray of hope for the people.” The Mango Project “reminds people of the importance of nutrition to our well-being,” he notes.
The nonprofit, whose efforts are financed mainly through donations from well-wishers, does not receive direct government support. Mr. Ojjo says that the central government often overlooks such local initiatives. He adds that malnutrition in Yumbe has declined slightly in other age groups but remains a challenge among children younger than 5 years old.
Climate crisis
One obstacle for The Mango Project is that charcoal, which is needed to heat the water used to sterilize jars, can be difficult to obtain. Since 2023, the government has banned commercial charcoal production in the northern region over concerns about the alarming depletion of trees there. Nevertheless, illegal, large-scale tree-cutting
has disrupted weather patterns in the region, where communities rely mainly on agriculture amid erratic, unpredictable rainfall. (On average, Uganda has been losing 122,000 hectares, or more than 300,000 acres, of forestland each year.)
The climate crisis has not spared Midigo’s mango seasons. Since 2017, the village has had one mango season yearly instead of two.
Laban Turyagyenda, the director of Ngetta Zonal Agricultural Research and Development Institute, attributes the changes in the mango season to a phenomenon known as flower bud abortion, which affects plant productivity.
“Extreme weather conditions like erratic rains initiate the physiological process for the plants to grow,” Dr. Turyagyenda says. “And when the rains suddenly stop, the flowers, which are paper-thin, dry up easily. If the rains are heavy, they can also damage the flowers, and therefore they can’t reproduce.”
Mr. Asiku has found one alternate form of fuel. Over the years, he has been scrimping and saving, and last year he purchased a solar-powered dryer worth $600. Besides mangoes, he dries vegetables such as okra and eggplant to give to villagers.
He hopes to distribute the food more widely as he acquires a license from the government to do so – and more dryers. He also has an orchard with 310 hybrid mango trees. This is meant to supplement the seasonal mangoes in case there is low supply because of damage caused by fruit flies.
“It’s fulfilling to see my people smiling at the end of the day,” Mr. Asiku says, as the sun sinks at the end of the nutrition seminar and villagers start heading home. Nearby, children giggle while eating from mango jars.
“Malnutrition is still there, but this does not mean that we should give up,” Mr. Asiku adds. “We will continue to fight it head-on with our superfruit.”
