10th AFRICA DAY FOR FOOD AND NUTRITION SECURITY

This landmark event was celebrated under the auspices of His Excellency Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, and planned by the Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture (DREA) of the AU Commission in consultation with AUDA-NEPAD and in partnership with HarvestPlus, WFP and other stakeholders.

The ceremonial event was preceded by a one-day Technical Dialogue on 29th October 2019 and was informed by the theme: “Towards Ending Hunger in Africa: Leveraging New Agricultural Technologies for Improved African Diets”.

The ADFNS has been celebrated annually since its launch in Lilongwe, Malawi, on 31st October 2010. From then Addis Ababa, Niamey, Kinshasa, Kampala, Accra, Abidjan and Dar es Salaam hosted it under different themes aligned to food and nutrition security.

In October 2010 the African Union Summit in Kampala, Uganda, designated October 30 to be Africa Day of Food and Nutrition Security. This observance was established to attract new commitments to achieve the ultimate goal of ending hunger in Africa. Currently the governments of African states do their best to end hunger by 2025, this goal was declared during the famous meeting on June 30-July 1 in Addis, Ethiopia.

Every year AU Summit chooses a special theme to organize various events and highlight the most important issues of hunger in Africa. The events facilitate strengthening country's engagements to secure food and nutrition agenda and consolidate political commitments to end hunger.

10th African Day for food and nutrition security (ADFNS)

The Cairo conference discussed opportunities and initiatives to increase access to science in agriculture, as well as public policies on nutrition and food support. In addition, the conference tackled food and poverty issues inside the black continent.

• The 1st day of the event addressed several topics including; malnutrition, adopting technology and research to develop the agriculture process, which reflected on the increase of production, in addition to taking advantage of Egyptian experiences and expertise to improve agriculture in African countries.
• The second day of the ADFNS was attended by Egypt’s health, endowments, immigration, higher education, supply, and trade ministers.

Resources:

THE ROLE OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION IN ENSURING FOOD SECURITY BY 2030,

UNCTAD, 2017, 55 pages.

Nutrition and Food Systems Implementation Plan: Towards a Coordinated and Accelerated Action for the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition in Africa, AUDA-NEPAD March 2019, 39 pages

The AUDA-NEPAD Nutrition and Food Systems Implementation Plan aims to catalyse and support this agenda and enable Member States to address malnutrition more effectively. This explicitly builds on a multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder approach involving an array of actions by several sectors in different forms in different countries. 

In order to achieve these goals, AUDA-NEPAD commits to adopting a multisectoral and food systems approach by:

• Accelerating agriculture impact on nutrition through increased dietary diversity and related improvements in nutrient adequacy and quality of diets. 
• Promoting maternal and young child nutrition through advocacy of essential nutrition interventions. These and include AUDA-NEPAD’s support to Scaling up Nutrition action on the continent and, including expanding work on the Cost of Hunger and Cost of Interventions to all African countries.
• Supporting better school feeding programmes promoted as a social protection mechanism through programmes that support the production and market creation for smallholder farmers.
• Developing nutrition and food systems professional capacity for planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of nutrition action on the African continent promoted.
• Generating and sharing strategic knowledge including management lessons on best practices to support nutrition progress in Africa.

Interviews:

The importance of research on the African food heritage

Interview with H.E. Josefa Leonel Correia Sacko Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture African Union Commission. She answers following questions:

• How important is research to preserve the African food heritage? "Research is important to have more evidence but the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) is facing major financial constraints"
• Can traditional food improve the diets?
• How can research help to rediscover the value of African traditional food? - How can the African Union Research Grants promote the collaboration between North Africa and the rest of Africa?
• Dr. Habiba WASSEF: "The African food heritage should be the first pillar in fighting malnutrition" (Resolution of the Third Africa Science, Technology and Innovation Forum, Cairo 10-12/02/2018
• Is it possible to promote the consumption of lentils and beans in Africa?

Overview of the recommendations made by the North Africa consultation meeting

Extract of the speech of Hon. Ezzedin Abu Steit, Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, giving an overview of the recommendations made by the North Africa consultation meeting of 28th of October, organized by LEAP4FNSSA with the support of ARC/ Agricultural Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation.

South-South collaboration North Africa-SSA

Interview with Hon. Ezzedin Abu Steit, Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, Egypt South-South collaboration North Africa-SSA

• How can African countries benefit from the annual Food Manufacturing Exhibitions in Cairo? • What is the expertise of the Egyptian Desert Research Center?
• How important is the upscaling of raised-bed technologies to produce faba beans and wheat in Egypt?
• How important is the collaboration among the CGIAR centers at the level of your country?

Forthcoming interviews:

• Selmi with Salmi AIDA, Research Engineer Tunis
• Dr. Mahmoud Elies Hamza, President Institution of Agricultural Research and Higher Education (IRESA)