Interconnecting Soil Health & Nutrition to Empower Africa’s Food Heroes - from Soil to Plate.
Reviving Africa's heritage foods, enhancing health and livelihoods. Learn more on what we do, starting in Uganda.
Despite Africa's rich variety of native cereals and many other indigenous foods, staples such as wheat, rice, and maize now dominate markets and diets, undermining nutrition and soil health. The latest statistics show that over one billion Africans cannot afford a healthy diet, and approximately 30% of children suffer from stunting due to malnutrition. Many indigenous foods have been lost or are in the process of being forgotten, affecting health, incomes, the environment, and cultural traditions.
BODY&SOIL aims to bridge this gap by working with local experts and communities to build scalable structures that interconnect heritage foods with soil health and nutrition .
The Vision
The vision of BODY&SOIL in Partnership with RUCID Organic College, is to build a social enterprise that creates a health cycle by combining farming and nutrition knowledge and integrating every part of the food chain—from soil to plate—across Africa, starting in Uganda. Our goal is to revive indigenous food knowledge through regenerative agriculture, producing healthy, safe, and accessible products grown and processed by local communities, reaching both local and wider markets. This approach could strengthen health, support livelihoods, while addressing climate change.
By documenting and reintroducing these foods, we aim to make them official, visible, and appealing, using storytelling to celebrate their cultural roots and showcase Africa’s rich heritage and its people.
Our mission is to identify indigenous foods that can replace maize, as well as other imported foods. A key focus is to establish scalable structures that can empower individuals, schools and communities across the continent, to lead healthy lives by building on their cultural heritage, achieving self-sufficiency, and ultimately reaching the market. If we effectively discover the right approaches during our baseline study, we will have the potential to scale up.
The Mission
The Personal Journal of BODY&SOIL
Hi, I’m Maria Schiffer, a German-American author, photographer, and holistic nutritionist, and the founder of BODY&SOIL. Through my research for my book Eating with Africa (DK Verlag, 2020) and my experience working with NGO-funded projects in Karamoja, Uganda, I’ve repeatedly encountered a critical health issue: the lack of diversity and nutritious foods in people’s diets. This challenge inspired me to seek grassroots solutions and to spark a movement for holistic health focusing on Africa.
In collaboration with RUCID Organic Agricultural College—an expert institution in indigenous foods, agroecology, and community development located on the outskirts of Kampala—we are creating a space to rediscover traditional knowledge and translate it into sustainable, regenerative, healthy practices for food production and consumption. What I share in my journal is our personal journey, highlighting the innovative solutions and complex challenges we’re uncovering in food and farming, starting in Uganda and extending across Africa. Don’t forget to subscribe below!
“It only seems impossible until it is done.”
— Nelson Mandela
Contact
Drop us a line!
E-Mail
hello@bodyandsoil.africa
Telephon
+256 774 427 463 OR +49 177 6222462