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Showing posts with label joint. Show all posts
Showing posts with label joint. Show all posts

Monday, August 13, 2018

FARA, NEPAD in high level joint advocacy for nutrition in Africa - NaijaAgroNet

As part of efforts to promote Food and Nutrition Security for Sustainable Agriculture on the continent, the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) and the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), have joined forces in a high level advocacy for nutrition in Africa, reports NaijaAgroNet.

They jointly organised a one-day high level advocacy event during the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) in in Cairo, Egypt, which saw notice on increased efforts and support from governments and stakeholders to improve nutrition and food systems are still needed.

The FARA Executive Director, Dr Abdulrazak Ibrahim noted that African governments and stakeholders have over the years been implementing several strategic interventions, among which include food fortification, dietary diversification, vitamin and mineral supplementation, public health interventions such as deworming and of late, biofortification.

He also said embracing food-based approaches should encompass biofortification in national and regional agriculture and nutrition policies, strategies, programmes and investment plans,’ was the theme of this event.

Chairperson of the PAP Committee on Agriculture, H.E Hon Kone Gognon, opened the meeting, saying that the theme for the meeting was pertinent, with a focus on ensuring food and nutrition security, pointing out that biofortification was already flagged as crucial in Africa.

Further, Dr. Ibrahim disclosed that FARA recognised the debilitating effects of hidden hunger, and highlighted FARA’s efforts, over the last years, in mainstreaming FNSSA within the National Agricultural and Innovation System (NAIS).

This was echoed by Dr Rose Omari, from FARA’s Building Nutritious Food Basket project, who elucidated the fact that micronutrient deficiency and its consequences are not widely known, as this is ‘hidden hunger.’

“Therefore, enhancing micronutrients content of staple crops during production is a critical intervention,” Dr Omari said.

Senior Advisor on Nutrition, Ms Bibi Giyose, who spoke on behalf of the NEPAD Agency’s CEO, Dr Ibrahim Mayaki, brought to the fore the fact that nutrition should not be viewed as a technical issue, as it also has political, structural and numerous other dimensions that dictate the need to find multi-sectorial solutions.

Prof Francis Zotor from the University of Health and Allied Sciences and African Nutrition Society, expressed a similar sentiment with a call to strengthen synergies in moving the nutrition agenda forward on the continent.

Present at the event were legislators from the following countries: Central African Republic; Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Niger, Senegal, Seychelles, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia.

The meeting concluded that while hidden hunger is real, reversing it is also possible to increase micronutrient content of commonly consumed foods through biofortification, especially to improve nutritional status of low income households will go a long way in redressing hidden hunger.

African Parliamentarians were called upon to follow up on declarations made by governments to ensure their implementation.

Remmy Nweke/ED, Ops

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Wednesday, June 29, 2016

FAO, IFAD, WFP host joint high-level meeting on El Nino impact

The rise on impact of El Niño climate devastation on agriculture in the Central America’s Dry Corridor has forced the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) to organize a high-level meeting in Rome, tomorrow, June 30, 2016, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Central America, NaijaAgroNet gathered has become one of the worst droughts zones in decades leaving some 3.5 million people food insecure, with most affected countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras having estimated 2.8 million people who are dependent on food aid.

The high-level meeting in Rome, NaijaAgroNet reports, would focus on the urgent need for long-term action to address the impact of El Niño, including building resilience for food security and nutrition for the most vulnerable populations in the affected countries.

NaijaAgroNet further gathered that El Niño and its counterpart La Niña occur cyclically, but in recent years, mainly due to the effects of global climate change, extreme weather events associated with these phenomena, such as droughts and floods, have increased in frequency and severity.

As said by FAO’s Peter Mayer, IFAD’s Joanne Levitan, and WFP’s Frances Kennedy, in a joint press statement made available to NaijaAgroNet, this situation has put at risk the livelihoods of millions of small-scale family farmers in the Dry Corridor, many of whom are heavily dependent on subsistence agriculture.

The trio equally clarified that the aim of the high-level meeting is to increase awareness of and the response to, this protracted and recurrent crisis, and to mobilize the international community to support the efforts of governments, UN agencies and other partners.

This includes strengthening of early warning systems, disaster risk management, and improving preparedness and coordination for emergency responses at national and regional levels.

In addition to relief work, they said, responding to the impacts of El Niño requires investing in improving poor rural communities’ ability to access land, credit and other resources while also ensuring they are provided with basic services like water, sanitation, health, education, transport infrastructure and electricity.  


Just as the FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva, IFAD President Kanayo F. Nwanze, and World Food Programme Executive Director Ertharin Cousin, would deliver the opening remarks, while the meeting would include a roundtable session with ministers from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico.

Isaac Oyimah/GEE
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Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Food security: UN, EU launch global network for joint assessments, coordinated action

A new network to achieve joint global food-security assessments and joint responses to food crises, including those related to phenomena such as El Niño, was launched in Istanbul Monday by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the European Union, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The Global Network for Food Insecurity, Risk Reduction and Food Crises Response, NaijaAgroNet gathered, would pave the way for enhancing the impact of future responses to food crises at the global level by regularly producing, in real time, joint reports based on key analyses and containing timely response options.

According to FAO, this will prompt coordination among stakeholders and promote joint planning and joint responses to food crises, in addition, to improving learning from past crises and increase the level of transparency and availability of crucial analysis of global needs.

The "Global Network" and its outputs are public goods, available for everybody. Participation in the network will be broadened to all key stakeholders that can contribute to the analysis and/or to the response. The network’s pilot publication “Global analysis of food and nutrition security situation in food crisis hotspots 2016” is the example that a joint analysis is possible. It covers 70 countries affected by a food crisis in 2015, including chronically vulnerable countries at or above Phase 2 of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)

Isaac Oyimah/GEE
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