Urban diets and nutrition: Trends, challenges, and opportunities for policy action

NaijaAgroNet:

The Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition has launched a new brief: Urban diets and nutrition: trends, challenges, and opportunities for policy action, reports NaijaAgroNet. Just as the President of the African Development Bank Dr. Akinwumi Adesina has received the World Food Prize 2017. The brief looks at the challenge of providing healthy diets in urban environments in low and middle-income countries, presenting eight recommendations directed primarily at policymakers especially those working at the sub-national level. Attended by Global Panel Members Akinwumi Adesina, President, African Development Bank and 2017 World Food Prize laureate; Agnes Kalibata, President, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa; Tom Arnold, Former Director General, Institute of International and European Affairs; and Emmy Simmons, Senior Adviser, Non-resident, to the Center for Strategic and International Studies Global Food Security Project; former Assistant Administrator, US Agency for International Development. 66 per cent of the world’s population is projected to be urban by 2050. The additional 2.5 billion urban residents will live primarily in Africa and Asia. This is leading to a growing crisis of urban malnutrition. “There is an urgent need for better urban governance around food, nutrition and health”, said Adesina. “Urban populations need improved information on how to live well by eating well.” The brief gives particular focus to the growing threat of diet-related non-communicable disease. The greater wealth in urban centres, relative to rural areas, does not necessarily lead to healthier diets, with excessive consumption of highly-processed foods that are high in calories but low in nutrients. Emmy Simmons argues that “within complex, diverse urban environments, poor dietary choices could create a further financial burden, with rising levels of overweight or obesity generating increases in the health care costs associated with non-communicable diseases”. The eight recommendations in the brief call for a wider policy approach which integrates actions from food, agriculture and nutrition into urban planning, education, health, sanitation, water and infrastructure development. It will also require a shift in attitudes towards the informal food sector and the collection of better data on urban diets. The brief shows how policymakers at the local level need to champion better diets and nutrition, but this requires them to be both mandated and empowered to act. Panel Member Tom Arnold argues that these “public policymakers need to recognise that productivity, quality of life and life expectancy in urban areas will revolve around healthy diets and lifestyles.” Without decisive action, the Global Panel argues that this urban malnutrition crisis will deepen. This is especially important in many low and middle-income countries where urban dwellers do not consume enough basic calories, lack sufficient micronutrients, or suffer from being overweight or obese with associated diet-related non-communicable diseases, leading to a ‘triple burden of urban malnutrition’. As Dr. Kalibata recently stated, “The growing threat of an urban food crisis can no longer be ignored”. Isaac Oyimah/GEE

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Mo Ibrahim delivers IFAD lecture, canvasses creating opportunities for African youngsters

NaijaAgroNet:

Globally recognized entrepreneur and founder of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, Dr Mohamed Ibrahim, at the weekend delivered the annual lecture for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), canvassing for the creation of opportunities for African youngsters in agriculture, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Dr. Ibrahim who spoke in Rome, took African governments to task for not living up to their commitments to invest in agriculture and rural development, stressing that its essential that they create opportunities for young people in agriculture so that they are able to resist the dangerous call of extremism. 

“No jobs, no hope,” he said, adding that Africa has more hungry, malnourished people than anywhere else in the world. “We are by far the least productive region in the agriculture sector but because we have more uncultivated, arable land than anywhere else, it presents opportunities.”

NaijaAgroNet equally gathered that a private-sector panel which included Sunny Verghese, Co-founder and Group CEO of Olam International, highlighted the need for bold initiatives to better link smallholder farmers to markets. Panel participants emphasized that everyone – government, the private sector, financing institutions such as IFAD, small- and medium-sized enterprises and smallholders farmers – have a role to play. 

While the second panel discussion, facilitated by IFAD Associate Vice President Périn Saint Ange, focused on innovative agricultural solutions to many of the global challenges discussed over the two days, including IFAD investments in farming technologies, approaches to empower women and youth, and the use of new technology to enhance rural development project design and management.

Dr Ismahane Elouafi, Director General of the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture, told correspondent that the world is at a crossroad in terms of its overuse of natural resources, and that the Middle East and North Africa region already has some of the highest water scarcity in the world.

"Climate change impacts the poor and marginalized most of all,” she said, underlining that they have huge challenges ahead, and there is need to act now.

NaijaAgroNet further gathered that some of the outcomes from the Farmers’ Forum, a two-day meeting held in conjunction with IFAD’s Governing Council, organizers announced a plan to make the platform for dialogue more inclusive, inviting pastoralists and livestock breeders to take part, and more decentralized creating stronger links to smallholders and family farmers on the ground.

+Remmy Nweke (ITRealms) +Naija AgroNet

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Pix: Mo Ibrahim

African youths advised to take advantage of rural areas

NaijaAgroNet:

The over 40 per cent of African population living in the rural areas, especially the youths, have been advised to take advantage of their environment by turning it into opportunities, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Head of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CADDP), Dr. Augustin Wambo Yamdjeu gave this advice in a chat with NaijaAgroNet at the on-going five-day inaugural meeting of Specialized Technical Committee (STC) on Agriculture, Rural Development, Water and Environment in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

He said, African youth are the backbone of everything  the continent has been trying to do with promising future which must be discovered for them to be able to claim it.

Also, he admonished the youth to desist from having the notion that only those living in the cities or urban areas could be successful in life.

“We have to stop moving from rural areas and increasing the number of people living in shanty towns in the cities,” he decried, adding that the expected transformation through agriculture could be achieved by the youth taking the bull by the horn and charting a new course for themselves via taking advantage of their rural environment.

“I believe in reversal of goals. Let the youth stay in the village where the possibility to create sustainable livelihood system for themselves and their families are possible through farming,” he said.

Dr. Yamdjeu underlined the need for member nations of the African Union to invest more in rural transformation and territorial development by way of reducing rural-urban migration. 

For him, CADDP through its Rural Futures; a framework that promotes transformation of rural areas in continent, already have thoughts on this, saying, for various African regions to be successful in agriculture, every factors militating against the sector must be brought to the table with solution proposed.

 “If indeed we have to encourage the youth into embracing agriculture, then rural areas have to be provided the opportunities that people are looking for in the towns, ranging from basic social services to agricultural financing,” Dr. Yamdjeu counseled.

  

+Remmy Nweke (ITRealms) in Addis Ababa

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Pix: Dr. Augustin Wambo Yamdjeu

Solar Jooce, BATNF train women solar technicians

Women at the training exercise

          In a bid to reduce unemployment among women in Nigeria, Solar Jooce and British American Tobacco Nigeria Foundation (BATNF) have concluded the first phase of training of the some rural Oyo women on assemblage and repairs of basic solar lanterns and phone charging units.

This follows the recent signing of an agreement to train these rural women in Oyo State and sealed between the Executive Director, BATN Foundation, Mr. Gbenga Ibikunle and the chief executive officer, Solar Jooce, Mr. David Agbakoba.

Speaking on the development, Solar Jooce boss, Mr. Agbakoba noted that of the world's 1.6 billion people living without electricity, 80 per cent live in Sub Saharan Africa.

Solar Jooce, a social enterprise dedicated to improve the quality of life of rural communities in Nigeria that have little or no access to electricity, through its coordinator, Anne Agbakoba, revealed to NaijaAgroNet that the main objective of the agreement in its pilot stage was to train an initial 20 rural ladies to become solar technicians and to help them set up solar micro-business.

This, she said, has kicked-off with the training which covers four local governments in Oyo State, namely Areas in Oyo state - Itesiwaju, Kajola, Oyo West, and Iseyin. The exercise, she said, is meant to empower the ladies to light up their communities and spread the use of solar as an alternative to dangerous and expensive fossil fuelled lighting such as the kerosene lamps.

She also confirmed to NaijaAgroNet that the initiative would be moved to other states across the federation with the collaboration of British American Tobacco Nigeria Foundation, an independent charitable organization incorporated in Nigeria with the vision to improve the quality of life of citizens in rural and urban in Nigeria.

Women at the training exercise 

Equally, she explained that the initiative entails a marketing and financial management training entitled ‘Growing your new solar Micro-business’ was conducted in Yoruba by Mrs. Yemi Owolabi, executive director, Finance of Standard Chartered Bank, Nigeria.

The Solar Jooce women’s empowerment initiative, NaijaAgroNet gathered, is a small step in the daunting task of providing a clean, alternative source of electricity, alleviating poverty, and providing opportunities for rural families in Nigeria.

NaijaAgroNet recalls that the training workshop is also supported by the Hertz Corporation, C & I Leasing (transport & logistics), Sesema PR, and the Bishop of Ajayi Crowther Diocese, Bishop O. O. Oduntan.

The first phases of the initiative was a massive awareness creation about the use and benefits of solar applications through the donation of combined solar lantern and phone charging unit to a community in the 36 states of the country.

Further, the second phase, NaijaAgroNet gathered is a long-term capacity building scheme which to train women in the assembling and troubleshooting solar applications in order for them to be able to start their own small solar trade with its first pilot in June 2012.

Remmy Nweke

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