Malnutrition is a major problem for rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. Technology such as the maize mill, which alleviates the burden of pounding grain, also introduces opportunities and new challenges for improved nutrition. While there have been many technical studies of grain mills, and maize mills are in operation in hundreds of locations throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, the maize mill has not been studied from a socio-technical system perspective. This paper reports on the first phase of a study grounded on the hypothesis that mills can improve nutrition by exploiting their function as a social gathering point and providing both instruction and enjoyable healthful products. The objective was to identify those products that could be made available that customers at the mill would be willing to buy. Following observation of food availability, preparation, and consumption preferences within daily work routines, sample products were prepared and presented for cooking and consumption, along with some discussion at a district center mill owned by a local woman. The responses of customers and the mill owner were positive. Strategies for local manufacture and distribution of these products for sale and roles of the mill owner and the mothers are questions for future study.

This paper revisits three reports on ergonomic aspects of development initiatives taking place in Industrially Developing Countries (IDCs). These include a macro-ergonomics intervention in a habitation community in Cape Verde (aimed at designing solutions contributing to sustainable development), the evolution of poultry growers' control strategies as an integrative broiler operation is introduced in Mozambique, and a set of macro-ergonomic considerations related to the Agro Forestry Village Project in Mozambique. The paper seeks to set the reviewed development endeavors against the backdrop of the goals of ergonomics interventions. This reflection may inform development agents in future processes of design and implementation of integrated community and work systems transformation.

This paper presents a model for understanding the evolution of worker strategies in rural northern Mozambique, an industrially developing agricultural region. We reviewed administrative data on grower productivity from an integrated poultry operation, visited three grower chicken houses, and followed-up with informal discussions with the integrator, examining tasks and strategies related to productivity. Defining strategy as a mode of behavior that demands a resource profile and generates a performance profile that depends on the environment, we discuss examples of strategies and their adaptation over three time horizons. These time horizons are exemplified in the poultry growing domain as the critical brooding period following birth, the weekly routine within a growing cycle, and the span of months comprised of several growing cycles. Responding to observed flock characteristics, growers used behavioral indicators of health to adjust temperature; used heuristics to adjust feed based on measured weight; and constructed items to reduce exposure of the flock to disease. Growers adapted strategies according to the work context. Heat control strategies, for example, varied seasonally. Viewing strategy change in the context of a self-regulation model in which growers actively control their work environment reveals interactions over time horizons, which range from minutes to months, and link micro and macro-cognition. The self-regulation model also suggests that strategy change creates experiences that enrich the grower's conceptual models and improve skills, which in turn enable new strategies. Investigating growers' control strategies can reveal interactions between micro and macro-cognition that influence strategy development and change.

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