10th Africa Day for Food and Nutrition Security ki

The commemoration of the 10th Africa Day for Food and Nutrition Security opened today in Cairo Egypt with a call to stimulate new policy directions and commitments for sustaining food policy implementation at all levels.

This year’s celebration themed “”Fostering New Agricultural Technologies for Improved African Diets is organized by the African Union Commission in collaboration with the Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt,the NEPAD Agency, World Food Programme, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Research Programme on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH).

According to the concept note that was made available at the Guardian reads that the overarching aim of the ADFNS is to serve as a platform for rallying political, technical and financial commitments at all levels to address contemporary challenges to food and nutrition security in Africa.

Adding that to-date the statistics of under nutrition, over-weight, micronutrient deficiencies, uncontrolled marketing and consumption of unsafe food and their related dire effects on health, nutritional status, wellbeing and economies on the continent, are upsetting.

A number of policy recommendations including high level decisions have been documented to improve the situation. However, there remain substantial challenges and bottlenecks hindering efforts to reverse the situation with persistent disparities, as well as emerging challenges including conflict and climate variability.

Highlighting the objectives it reads that the main aim of commemorating the 2019 ADFNS is to motivate increased appreciation of the underlying benefits and potential that agriculture science, technology and innovation agenda brings into the food production, processing and consumption for health and nutrition industry, in order to stimulate new policy directions and commitments for sustaining food policy implementation at all levels.

objectives are to create or raise awareness of available opportunities (funding, technical support, etc.). These opportunities include tested and successfully applied food and agricultural technologies which resulted in improved food security and nutrition indicators ,to stimulate rejuvenated action by all key stakeholders toward investing in application of science in agricultural, livestock and aquaculture production that lead to improved nutrition and health outcomes.

To produce strategic directions for improving capacities (technical, institutional, managerial and financial) for delivering on food systems-based initiatives and to raise the awareness of available opportunities of harnessing science in agriculture for improved livelihoods of refugees and IDPs.

Expected Outcomes

The principal expected outcomes of the commemoration of the 10th ADFNS is to arrive at a way forward of business unusual for enriching African food systems by utilizing emerging agriculture technologies and innovations for improved quality of diets, nutrition and health of Africans. Alongside this, the event is expected to generate:

Increased appreciation of the critical role that the agricultural technologies, food systems based approaches, in relation to nutritional trends play to inform decision making and improve nutrition and health of the African population.

Common information and good practices sharing platform for food and nutrition security among the African countries.

Relevant policies and initiatives for improved food security and nutrition that can be replicated within African countries, in alignment with nutrition decade for action and SDG 2 targets.

A secondary outcome of the event is synthesis/summary of outcomes of the technical discussions which will precede the main event.

The Africa Day for Food and Nutrition Security (ADFNS) was declared in July 2010 by the African Union Heads of State and Government at the 15th Ordinary Session of the AU Summit in Kampala, Uganda tugged as Decision “Assembly/AU/Dec.327(XV)”.

This decision was made in recognition of the unacceptable and chronic crisis of hunger and malnutrition in Africa. The ADFNS has so far been successfully commemorated eight times following its launch in Lilongwe, Malawi, on 31st October 2010. Successive editions of the Day were hosted by Ethiopia, AU Headquarters, Niger, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Tanzania.

The commemoration of the 10th ADFNS drew the participation of high-level leaders from global, regional and national agriculture associations, African and other governments, civil society and farmers’ organizations, the private sector, scientific and research institutions, farmer organizations and development partners hosted by Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt.

Source: IPP Media