Orange-Fleshed Sweetpotato (OFSP), once a simple staple crop, is now emerging as a powerful driver of nutrition, income, and job opportunities especially for women and youth smallholder farmers. Through the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) OFSP Compact, smallholder farmers are not only producing food but building resilient livelihoods. The Compact has strengthened food security and dietary diversity, catalyzed rural enterprise development, and created jobs along the value chain. These gains are enabling families to pay school fees, meet medical expenses, and invest in productive assets such as improved housing, water systems, and even vehicles.
As a program, the aim of TAAT is to rapidly expand access of smallholder farmers, with strong emphasis on women and youth (60% of the beneficiaries) to high yielding agricultural technologies to improve their food production, assure food security and raise rural incomes, and deliver regional public goods by scaling up agricultural technologies across similar agro-ecological zones.
This vision is brought to life through an integrated delivery model. Farmers receive clean planting materials, training in good agronomic and post-harvest practices, processing and value addition, nutrition education, entrepreneurship and business skills, and deliberate efforts to build market linkages. As a result, over 84,000 women and youth have been directly trained, with more than 600,000 women and youth reached through improved access to OFSP technologies across production, nutrition, processing, and marketing.
For many households, OFSP has become a lifeline during periods of chronic seasonal food scarcity. For women like Mrs. Shashitu Girgesa in Wondo Woreda, Ethiopia, OFSP has closed chronic seasonal food gaps in a maize-based system, ensuring that her seven-member household has roots to harvest and consume especially during the June–September lean season. “Before OFSP, we depended on maize that often ran out before the next harvest. Now, we always have roots to cook, even in lean months,” she explains. Increased root and vine sales have provided income for school supplies, basic household needs, and small savings.
In Rwanda, decentralized vine multipliers such as Jeanne Mukasine of Gakenke district and Jeanne Uwemeyimana of Kayonza district have transitioned from subsistence farming to commercially oriented seed enterprises. Their annual earnings from vine sales have increased several-fold. For example, Jeanne’s earnings have increased from USD 3000 before 2020 to between USD 15,000-20,000, enabling them to expand landholdings, pay university-level tuition for their children, and employ other women as on-farm workers and outgrowers. They now host research trials and farmer learning visits and are recognized locally as role models for women’s economic empowerment in agriculture.
Women processors are also leveraging OFSP purée to access higher-value markets. In Gasabo district, Rwanda, Nyiransabimana Nadia’s annual revenue rose from USD 2,309 to USD 6,918 after she began producing bread, doughnuts, and cakes that incorporate OFSP, supported by TAAT training in business management and marketing. Similarly, the Young Women Christian Association (YWCA) group in Muhanga, represented by Mukamutari Monique, now supplies OFSP-based bakery products to schools, churches, and local markets, employing four women and three youth and using improved OFSP raw materials to enhance product quality and competitiveness.
In Uganda, youth- and women-led “silage hubs” demonstrate how OFSP residues can be turned into a profitable resource. Groups collect non-marketable roots and vines and process them into sweetpotato silage, a storable, nutrient-rich livestock feed that supports higher milk yields and growth rates. Enterprises such as MADCO Investments, led by youth mother Martha Namabiro, employ women and young people in vine collection, on-farm farmer training, silage processing, and the supply and transport of silage choppers, contributing to income diversification and skills development.
Access to improved varieties and agronomy has also enabled women to participate in wider markets. In Massinga, Mozambique, Ana A. Ngovene used just 8 kg of improved Esther OFSP vines as a starting point to build a commercial sweetpotato business selling to local markets and across the border into South Africa. Her enterprise now generates regular income, which she has reinvested in constructing a permanent house, installing piped water, and purchasing a car, illustrating how technology access and technical support can drive asset accumulation.
These experiences show that OFSP is not only a climate-resilient, vitamin A–rich crop, but also a platform for women’s economic empowerment, youth employment, and local enterprise development. Demand for OFSP technologies is growing as climate shocks intensify and households seek resilient, nutrition-sensitive options. Building on strengthened national research systems, long-term collaboration with governments and humanitarian actors, and growing engagement with private sector and community-based enterprises, the Compact is well positioned to deepen and scale these gains to last-mile women and youth.