Home-grown Food for Africa
By Dr Arvind Kumar
According to a recent media report, a group of international academic institutions and an NGO supported by the European Union (EU) have launched Sustainable Nutrition Research for Africa in the Years to come, or SUNRAY, to develop a nutrition agenda for Africa, with specific emphasis on the 34 sub-Saharan countries. Carl Lachat, a researcher at the Belgium-based Institute for Tropical Medicine, one of the participating institutions, has stated: “We want to make sure nutrition interventions in the next 10-15 years – when Africa faces potential environmental changes which will impact on nutrition – are sustainable, driven by African countries, and their priorities are not pre-defined by donors.” A recent study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a US-based think-tank, found that in another two decades the effect of climate change on food production could drive child malnutrition up by 20 percent.
The two-year SUNRAY project has invited proposals for working papers from African researchers to review the relationship between nutrition and climate change; the influence of rising food prices; the future availability of water; social dynamics in households, and the effect of rapid urbanization, among other themes in order to identify the specific research needs for nutrition in these areas. The project will produce a roadmap document summarising research priorities, strengths and gaps, resource requirements, opportunities for linkage and support between African and Northern institutions, or synergies between existing initiatives and research in other sectors. If this project succeeds, similar projects can be launched for other least-developed countries.
