The African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) held its twenty second Senior Policy Seminar on March 09-10, 2020 in Abuja, Nigeria under the theme : “Agriculture and Food Policies for Nutrition in Africa”. Panel member Dr Adebisi Araba, Africa Director, International Center for Tropical Agriculture attended the event.

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The African Economic Research
Consortium (AERC)’s twenty second
Senior Policy Seminar
March 09 to 10, 2020
Abuja, Nigeria
Attended: Dr Adebisi Araba, Regional Director for Africa at the International Center for
Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and Malabo Montpellier Panel Member.
Exercise on what you had for breakfast!
The synthesis paper asked three basic questions:
1. Whether diets in SSA are shifting toward more highly processed foods, with greater
shares of food purchased away from home, more sugars and/or potentially obesogenic
foods?
2. How do agricultural production and market policies affect the affordability of nutritious
diets?
3. Who lacks and benefits from dietary diversity?
An honourable mention should go to the word ‘processed’. It appears that it is being given an
unworthy stigma. Ladies and gentlemen, the word ‘processed’ does not (or should not) equate
to unhealthy. Processed milk, for example, could mean fortified with additional micronutrients
and pasteurized (free from pathogens).
In January last year, the EAT-Lancet report on Food, Planet and Health was published and
one of the recommendations was for a shift towards increased consumption of plant-based
foods. One idea that is gaining momentum is the processing of biofortified foods into quick-
cooking, energy and labour-saving forms, as time and energy poverty are equally important in
determining dietary choices. We should expect to see more examples of these new food
products, such as extruded biofortified bean noodles and pastas in the market in a short while.
One of the issues not quite amplified in the synthesis paper is the impact of globalisation and
trade on diets. Global value chains and trade systems now allow anyone potential access to any
food group produced on the planet, regardless of where you live. An asymmetry in productivity
has also led to some countries punching significantly higher than their weight in their share of
global production. Most African countries have extremely low productivity, due to a myriad
of factors which we are mostly aware of, but coupled with the cheap cost of moving goods

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around the world, are now unable to compete domestically, talk less of globally in local
commodity value chains. We now have the absurd situation where Thai, Vietnamese and
Chinese rice outcompetes domestic rice in Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal.
There is a popular saying that “you are what you eat”. I would like to qualify that by adding
that “you eat what is rationally accessible.”
As you may have noticed from the mini-exercise earlier, there is evidence to show that globally,
mankind is approaching a convergence in the diversity of diets we consume. With Rice, Wheat
and Maize dominating staple crops and oil-palm, sunflower, soybean and rapeseed oil
dominating oils. However, at the micro-scale, we have hope for increases in dietary diversity.
Two examples here are the increase in consumption of kale; originally from the Mediterranean
region and Quinoa, from the Andes in South America.
In the paper, the authors show that, in Africa, the consumption of pulses, legumes, nuts,
vegetables, fruits and meat have increased the most over the last three decades.
The authors also show that while there is a marked increase in the consumption of all food
groups overall, there are variations when we increase the resolution of our observation;
especially between rural-urban and income classes. This is not unexpected as food systems are
evolving across Africa. One question I might have is if there is any observation around a
convergence between urban and rural food systems and what the policy implications will be.
Musanze
We all agree that the ambitions contained in the Malabo Declaration, the African Union’s
Agenda 2063, and global development goals are recognition of the size and complexity of the
challenge that still lies ahead. Sustaining the progress to realize the goals of ending extreme
poverty and hunger by 2030, and the many other targets anchored within the Malabo
Declaration and the Sustainable Development Goals, will require continued improvement in
the quality of policy and program design and implementation.
In 2017, the Malabo-Montpellier Panel published a report titled Nourished: How Africa Can
Build a Future Free from Hunger and Malnutrition. The report takes a systematic study
approach of seven (7) countries to identify where progress has been achieved. It analyzes which
policy decisions were taken to substantially reduce malnutrition levels and to promote healthier
and more diverse diets, and draws lessons for other countries to replicate such successes. The
report provides a roadmap for African governments to take concerted action to deliver on the
nutrition targets set out by the Malabo Declaration and the Sustainable Development Goals
which are.
i. Adopt a comprehensive policy on nutrition as a top priority.
ii. Create a broad partnership dedicated to nutrition among key groups of actors.
iii. Set up mechanisms to coordinate a coherent agenda on nutrition across government.
iv. Strengthen food-system regulation and controls to raise the supply of safe and nutritious
food.

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v. Expand access to nutrition education to ensure long-term positive changes in dietary
patterns.
vi. Invest in the availability and use of better data for more effective interventions.
vii. Design programs that capture the synergies among agriculture, water, health, and
sanitation to maximize the impact on nutrition.
Also, addressing malnutrition needs to be comprehensive.
Lesson 1: A small but growing body of research indicates that progress in reducing child
malnutrition is substantially uneven from place to place even down to the sector or sub-district
level within countries. Yet stunting prevalence data available for priority setting and planning
are often only available at district level. The lesson here is that there are limits to the ability to
generalise large area data (provincial or district level for example) to smaller areas (sector
level). In addition, a focus on large area data alone may blind public health planners and policy
makers to otherwise obvious success stories.
Lesson 2: It is clear to nutrition stakeholders that there is a global focus on stunting reduction
as an explicit goal. But while this is fundamental to improving nutrition in Rwanda, or any
other nation for that matter, is it enough to guarantee success? Clearly, improving nutrition is
not just about reducing hunger; hidden hunger remains a formidable foe that cannot be ignored.
A dual focus on macro and micronutrient deficiency is the most probable formula to ensure a
comprehensive nutrition plan for the eradication of all forms of malnutrition.
Lesson 3: There is consensus that preventing malnutrition of children and women needs
attention on the crucial 1,000-day window – from the start of a woman’s pregnancy until her
child’s second birthday – that can have a life-changing impact on a child’s future and help
break the cycle of poverty
Lesson 4: We should explore other complementary pathways to reducing malnutrition. The
importance of factors such as poor health and sanitation especially among women; access to
nutrition-related information; women empowerment regarding work burden, and access to
financial resources such as credit facilities, for example. Labour-saving technologies that are
friendly for women and attractive to men, and nutrition education programmes, are examples
of such complementary interventions that should be promoted.
Lesson 5: Efforts targeting nutrition education and awareness, knowledge, attitudes and
practices can address the malnutrition problem, in addition to addressing agricultural
productivity and gender empowerment in the households. Results strongly point to the need
for multi-sectoral efforts and coordination among the different national agencies involved in
combating nutrition challenges.