ABSTRACT

Orange-fleshed sweet potato and biofortified cassava consumption promotion is one of the key nutrition sensitive interventions implemented to address high vitamin A deficiency. The study was a cross-sectional study. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select a total of 340 respondents for the study. Data on socio-demographic/economic characteristics, awareness and knowledge, utilization of biofortified cassava and orange fleshed sweet potato by the respondents and perception of the respondents towards orange fleshed sweet potato and biofortified cassava were collected using structured and validated questionnaire. The IBM SPSS version 20 computer programme was used to analyze the data. More than half (64.4%) of the respondents were females. Most (42.9%) of the respondets are between the age bracket of 18-35 years and 63.5% of them are married. However, 43.5% of the respondents were aware of orange fleshed sweet potatoes while 76.8% of them were aware of biofortified cassava. Only 36.2% of the respondents had good knowledge about orange flesh sweet potatoes and biofortified cassava. Meanwhile, 40.6%of the respondents consume orange flesh sweet potatoes, 52.3% consume it once in a week while majority (58.8%) of them purchase orange fleshed sweet potatoes and biofortified cassava mainly from the market. Majority (87.9%) had a negative perception towards orange fleshed sweet potatoes and biofortified cassava, 57.6% of them have negative perception towards the benefits of consuming orange fleshed sweet potatoes and biofortified cassava while half (50.3%) of the respondents had a positive perception towards the barriers of consuming orange fleshed sweet potatoes and biofortified cassava. These results therefore suggest that projects seeking to promote consumption of orange-fleshed sweet potato and biofortified cassava as an intervention for vitamin A deficiency control should promote production of orange-fleshed sweet potato and biofortified cassava and sensitization of communities on the health benefits of biofortified cassava and orange-fleshed sweet potato consumption.