Food and Nutrition Security
A good nutritional status is both an outcome and a key enabler of sustainable development. All forms of malnutrition – whether insufficient calorie intake, micronutrient deficiencies or overweight – not only have an impact on the health of individuals but also on the economic performance of entire nations and their resilience to shocks. Adequate nutrition is a basic requirement for physical and cognitive development of children and hence has a strong positive influence on educational success, labour productivity and income earned later in life. In turn, investments in improving food and nutrition security, especially in the first 1,000 days of life, are among the most cost-effective interventions to ensure sustainable development, poverty reduction and economic growth.
The thematic orientation of the working group on Food and Nutrition Security (formerly FSNR) is located both within the framework of the SEWOH – One World-No Hunger initiative by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), which addresses food insecurity and malnutrition through various channels, particularly in Africa, and the global Scaling Up Nutrition Movement, which has been pushing for action and investment to improve maternal and child nutrition since 2009.
The working group was launched at the SNRD Africa Conference in May 2017. It aims at fostering systematic discussions on experiences in targeting, planning, implementing and monitoring FNS-related approaches and activities.
The group shares information and organises peer learning across the member programmes in Africa and sector programmes in Germany, resource persons at GIZ head office, affiliated freelance consultants and other networks working on similar topics. In addition, group members try to seize opportunities to meet at occasions such as regional workshops and conferences related to topics of common interest or jointly organized training courses and workshops.
Work streams
Without adequate and sustained investments in good nutrition, the Sustainable Development Goals will not be reached. Malnutrition impairs people’s productivity which, in turn, reduces national growth. In this sense, malnutrition represents an often invisible impediment to the successful achievement of the SDGs. Good nutrition is therefore both an outcome of development as well as a precondition for it.
UPDATES
PRODUCTS
VIDEOS
How to React to the Rising Demand for Evidence-Based Policy Advice
Brief statement by Ousmane Djibo in Abidjan
Agricultural Transformation Critical for Inclusive Growth in Africa
Brief statement by Michael Hailu of CTA
SNRD Africa’s New Speaker on the Upcoming Challenges
Brief welcome note by the new SNRD Africa Speaker Rita Weidinger
The Three Most Important Topics in Development Cooperation
Brief statement by Tobias Gerster, Head of Division Africa Supra-Regional and Horn of Africa
Population Growth and Youth Employment
Keynote by Felix Kwame Yeboah of Michigan State University
The Future Is Female — Rural Women and Gender
Keynote by Agnes Babugura of IIE MSA
AGROPROCESSING:
SOLAR ENERGY FOR THE DRY SEASON
Attempts to preserve food are as old as mankind itself – already thousands of years ago humans applied techniques to increase the shelf life of foodstuff and therefore be able to store it for times of scarcity. However, not every conservation technique is easily adaptable to any context worldwide and sometimes it requires alternative ideas to make time-tested technologies suitable for a new context. One of these adaptations is currently successfully being tested in the Ethiopian highlands; the heat of the sun is employed to process raw food materials and thus preserve them over time.
