"There is persistent low adoption of nutrient dense crops, such as biofortified orange maize, quality protein maize (QPM), orange fleshed sweet potatoes (OFSP) and high iron beans (HIB) despite government efforts to promote their production and utilization. In Malawi, many people are used to consuming nsima: a major staple food made from white maize. The introduction of biofortified orange maize, though nutritionally superior to white maize, has faced resistance among different age categories, especially the elderly merely because of its orange color. Generally, there is unwillingness by communities to replace white maize, which is low in vitamin A with orange maize, which is high in vitamin A although messages regarding the nutritional superiority of the latter are disseminated. For OFSP, majority of people complain that it has low dry matter content therefore is less satiating than traditional white fleshed sweet potatoes (Mwanga et al, 2011). Generally, households choose food based on their tradition and appeal but not on nutrition information. In addition, nutrition message dissemination channels, such as Lead Farmers (LF) concept, Care Group (CG) model and extension frontline workers that are currently used to disseminate nutrition information related to high nutrient dense crops are not adequately customized towards promoting these elite crops. Evidence reveal that the LF concept reach only 7-13% of households (Ragasa, 2020), while the CG model targets only women (Pieterse et al., 2020; Perry et al., 2015) who are traditionally less likely to decide on the type of crops to grow. Men, who make most of the productive decisions are inadequately involved. Similarly, extension workers coverage with messages is only 35-56% of households (Ragasa, 2020) and households reached with nutrition information could be lower. The assumption is that addressing the above stated problems could increase adoption of nutrient dense crops, thereby enabling farmers to achieve food and nutrition security, which FoodMa program would like try to achieve. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to develop and assess effectiveness of the novel ‘Atsogo’ Extension Model to increase adoption of nutrient dense biofortified food; to develop innovative food products from nutrient dense crops that could be consumed by communities, and to develop and fabricate battery driven solar charged grinder/miller that would help communities to produce composite flours for multiple uses. The ultimate strength of this project is the three phase innovation model. The first phase is to develop, use and assess the effectiveness of a novel ‘Atsogo’ Extension Model to promote the fabricated miller and new food products, thereby increasing adoption of biofortified and nutrient dense food. The novel ‘Atsogo’ Extension Model targets influential people as agent of change in the communities regardless of gender. The second phase is to fabricate innovative battery driven solar powered grinder/miller using locally found and affordable materials that community members can easily use to process HIB, OFSP, orange maize and QPM into nutrient dense composite flours and other products. The third phase is to create new food products from nutrient dense and biofortified crops that are acceptable by the wider consumers. . This project is relevant to FoodMa aspirations as it seeks to improve food, nutrition security and income among agriculture dependent rural households by increasing farmers’ productivity, access to the market and the use of different types of technologies to process food and achieve food security in order to strengthen local food systems. To achieve our objectives, we plan to capacitate farmers (Agri-prenuers or other farmer groups) by providing trainings on production and processing and provide start-up inputs (seed and fertilizer) which will result in increased production of and income from nutrient dense crops. The miller/grinder that will be developed will reduce the cost of processing thereby increasing farmers’ profit margins. The beneficiaries of this project include youth, people with disabilities and people living with HIV/AIDS, and individuals or farmer groups in five district of Dowa, Mchinji, Kasungu, Mzimba and Rumphi. The project will support two MSc student research as part of the capacity building. The students’ research will contribute towards achieving of the project objectives."