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Our head of communications, Carolynne Wheeler, caught up with our Afghanistan project manager, Mursal Abrar, and our Afghanistan research manager, Mahdi Zaki, to learn about our project focused on nutrition with the World Food Programme.

Carolynne: Mahdi, Mursal – thank you for joining me! Please can you tell me about what we have been doing with the World Food Programme to address the current crisis in Afghanistan?

Mursal: Our World Food Programme (WFP) funded project began because Afghanistan is in a major crisis related to food security. According to recent WFP data, 19.9 million people in Afghanistan face acute food insecurity and 6 million Afghans face emergency-level food insecurity. The concept of our project was to help build the resilience of people in this crisis – to help them to cope and to improve their diet and nutrition with what limited resources they have. We wanted to create programming that would discuss symptoms of malnutrition, and to look at how to help women eat nutritious foods during pregnancy.

We also wanted to tackle the taboos that exist around certain foods in Afghanistan. Our culture is very focused on the importance of meat and bread. Lentils, for instance, are seen as food only for the poorest people, although they are very nutritious. Vegetables are widely available but also not seen as important.

We had a lot of discussion around affordable, healthy eating, and celebrating different foods – including plants, protein and dairy - that are still widely available in Afghanistan.

Carolynne: One of the questions you had to address at the start of this project is, how can media and communication help when you have so many millions of people who are food insecure. How did you handle this?

Mahdi: Before the start of the project, we had this discussion among ourselves, especially the research team. At the time, we were saying that over 22 million people were in need of food assistance, and in the last year it has increased to 28 million. So we had this tough moral discussion. We were spending money to produce media outputs; shouldn’t this money be used to help people buy bread to feed their children?

We began with research, to find out how media could help. We did a nationally representative survey for this project, speaking with over 3,000 people around the country – men and women. Around 40% of the interviews were face-to-face because more than 40% of people in Afghanistan do not have access to mobile phones.

We also did some qualitative interviews with women, IDPs (internally displaced people), Kuchi nomadic people and people with disabilities. And we asked questions including what is their usual diet, who makes decisions about what to eat for meals, who purchases food, what information sources could they access, and what information do they have about nutrition and nutritious food?

We found two types of families – those who were really struggling to feed themselves, and those who had some food, but did not know how they could make nutritious meals.

We also learned that doctors are major influencers when it comes to health and nutrition, and that people trusted radio and TV most.

Carolynne: You have said that in Afghanistan, when people think about their daily meal, most people think first of bread, then of red meat and rice. How did you tackle these traditional beliefs in your programmes?

Mahdi: Red meat is considered as the highest standard. When you invite people to your house you have to cook meat and rice. That would be considered a proper meal. Vegetables are never welcomed! Traditionally we cook with a lot of oil.

We had to look at who is cooking – usually women - and who is buying in the market – which can be women or men. The programme encouraged audiences to discuss what they have to prepare, to make a meal plan for what they want to cook. We discussed the importance of nutrition for children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and older people, to maintain their strength.

We also looked at how people were spending money on food. In Afghanistan, people traditionally eat a lot of bread. So the programme looked at how people could go to the market and, instead of buying 10 loaves of bread for 100 Afghanis, they could buy five loaves of bread and spend the rest of the money on potatoes and other vegetables. In this way, they could diversify their diet and consume a more nutritious meal.

Carolynne: Now that the programming has been on air, what have you learned about its impact?

Mursal: We have done an evaluation and we have heard some feedback from communities who are very marginalised that this weekly radio programme really helped them. They said that they understand they can prepare a healthy and nutritious meal with different foods, even with a limited income. Previously, they understood they could only have bread. We also shared information about how to access humanitarian aid and food distribution.

Mahdi: The most satisfactory finding is when we found that the information provided by our radio programme was helpful to people. It had provided them with a perspective that they could diversify their meal, instead of just eating bread. The programme provided them with the information that vegetables could be very nutritious. It helped people who are very poor, earning maybe just 100 or 200 Afghanis a day. In the past, that person might think we can only buy some loaves of bread, and it has changed their perspective of what they can have for a meal.

Mursal: This finding was very touching for us, and it was the highlight of the programme, because we really wanted to build the resiliency of people in this crisis.

Madhi: Here is what some of our listeners said about our work:

“In the past, we used to buy a large flour bags and consume within two weeks. After we listened to [the radio programme], now we consume the same bag in one month. I have started work with livestock. I have learnt about these after listening to this programme and I want this programme to continue.”

 - A 50-year man living in an IDP camp in Herat province

“I am pregnant and the programme has helped me a lot. After listening to this programme, I have started consuming vegetables and diversified my diet. Vegetables are cheap and we can make nutritious food, and also they are very useful for women who breastfeed their child and pregnant women like me. And the programme also talked about beans which are also very important to us.”

 - A 28-year woman living in an IDP camp in Herat province

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Our media and communication for development project with the World Food Programme ran from July 2022 to February 2023, and included a radio magazine-style programme, Destarkhan (Dinner Table), with community members and nutrition experts discussing nutrition and food security; a radio drama with messages on nutrition; and public service announcements on how to access food assistance from aid agencies. To learn more about our work in Afghanistan, please see our website.