On November 22 in Equatorial Guinea, CIP Director General Dr. Barbara Wells accepted the Al-Sumait prize for CIP’s work in introducing 
Vitamin A Rich orange flesh sweetpotato to 2.8 million households in Sub-Saharan African.
Play a video of awardees receiving the Al-Sumait Prize
In her remarks, Dr. Wells thanked His Excellency Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al Hamad Al Sabah, KFAS and the Al-Sumait Board for acknowledging CIP’s work stating that she was “honored to represent the International Potato Center and accept the 2016 Al-Sumait Prize for African Food Security on behalf of our Resilient Nutritious Orange Fleshed Sweetpotato Team who, through their dedicated work, have bridged agriculture and nutrition to introduce Vitamin A biofortified OFSP into the diets of mothers and children in Africa.”
Play a video for background on the Al-Sumait Prize
Dr. Wells went further to say that, “through our work, we have developed the evidence that including only 125g of OFSP in the daily diet of pregnant and nursing mothers and children under 5, we can eliminate childhood blindness, while also contributing to the reduction of chronic malnutrition or stunting.”
“This award is a recognition of the groundbreaking OFSP work that we have done to ensure that our agriculture for nutrition interventions deliver on our goals of a nutrition and income secure world. To date, together with our partners we have impacted 2.8M households across Sub-Saharan Africa. With the generosity of this most prestigious prize, we will accelerate our delivery of impact to scale, reaching millions more households. Our goal is to impact 15MM households over the next 7 years.”
The International Potato Center has the mission to reduce poverty and improve food and nutrition security of smallholder farmers across Africa, Asia, and Latin America / areas of the world most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, food insecurity and undernutrition.