Looking for Healthy Eating? Come to Africa!

Many diets in Africa contain a plethora of
 nutritious leafy greens. Photo credit: Joan Baxter
A 2015 study published by The Lancet Global Health journal looked at the consumption of food (both healthy and unhealthy items) and nutrients in 187 countries in 1990 and then again in 2010. The aim was to determine which countries had the world’s healthiest diets.

It found that none of the healthiest ten diets is in a wealthy Western nation, nor are any in Asia. Most were found in Africa, which is so often portrayed as a continent of constant famine in need of foreign know-how and advice on how to eat and to grow food.

And yet, of the ten countries with the healthiest diets on earth, nine of them are African.

What’s more, the three countries with the very best diets are some the world’s poorest. Chad, ranked as having “very low human development”, 185th of 188 nations on the United Nation 2015 Human Development Index, has the world’s healthiest diet. After that come Sierra Leone and Mali, 181st and 179th on the same Index.

Many diets in Africa contain a plethora of nutritious leafy greens. Photo credit: Joan Baxter

The only non-African country on the top ten list is Israel, in ninth place. Other African nations with the best diets are, in descending order: The Gambia, Uganda, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Somalia.

This doesn’t mean that these countries have no food insecurity, hunger or malnutrition. But it does mean that it is time for a serious rethink on how “development” affects diets – especially among the development agencies, international institutions and donors in the (sometimes lucrative and self-serving) business of food aid or improving food security and nutrition in Africa.

The authors of the study conclude that their results have “implications for the reduction of disease and economic burdens of poor diet by lowering the consumption of unhealthier foods, increasing the consumption of healthier foods, or both”.
But this is unlikely to happen so long as the development initiatives claiming to improve food security and eliminate malnutrition in Africa fail to recognize that their technological and market fixes may well encourage a nutrition transition away from healthy traditional diets and foods. And in doing so, they may merely compound the problems caused by already high rates of undernutrition with a whole set of new diet-related health issues.
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InfoPoint lunch-time conference – Hunger and Food Security

14 March 2016. Brussels. DevCo External Cooperation InfoPoint. An overview of the situation of food and nutrition security in the world was presented. Special emphasis was given to the current situation of El Niño, current droughts in Africa South of the Sahara, and potential policies that need to be put in place in the future to minimize these and associated risks.
  • Introduction: Jean-Pierre Halkin, Head of Unit - DEVCO C1- Rural development, Food security, Nutrition
  • Presentation: Maximo Torrero, Director, Markets, Trade and Institutions Division, International Food Policy Research Institute
Maximo Torero, points out that 31% of the food calories exported from African countries went to other African countries in the mid-2000s—a low proportion, but an improvement on the 14% rate ten years earlier.


Related
12 March 2016. The Economist. Farming in Africa. Miracle grow.
After many wasted years, African agriculture is improving quickly. Here is how to keep that trend going  | From the print edition

SOMETIMES it seems as though Adam’s curse, which promises mankind a harvest of thorns and thistles, applies only to African farmers. The southern part of the continent is in the teeth of a drought, which has been blamed on El Niño.

The weather has been even worse in northern Ethiopia, where crops are shrivelling and cows are dying. But droughts, unlike biblical curses, end eventually. El Niño does not change the fundamental, remarkable fact about farming in sub-Saharan Africa: it is rapidly getting better.


The post-war green revolution that transformed Asia seemed to have bypassed Africa. But between 2000 and 2014 grain production tripled in countries as far-flung as Ethiopia, Mali and Zambia. Rwanda did even better (see article African agriculture. A green evolution). Farming remains precarious in a continent with variable weather and little irrigated land. But when disaster hits, farmers nowadays have a bigger cushion.


Related:
Economics of Land Degradation and Improvement – A Global Assessment for Sustainable Development.
Nkonya, E., Mirzabeaev, A. and vonBraun, J. Eds. 2016.
Springer Intl. Pub. -Open. 695p.

This book on Economics of Land Degradation and Improvement provides with valuable knowledge and information both at the global, regional, and national levels on the costs of land degradation and benefits of taking action against land degradation.

A key advantage of this book is that it goes beyond the conventional market values of only crop and livestock products lost due to land degradation, but seeks to capture all major terrestrial losses of ecosystem services. Twelve carefully selected national case studies provide rich information about various local contexts of cost of land degradation as evaluated by local communities, drivers of land degradation, and amenable strategies for sustainable land management.

Extracts:


Economics of Land Degradation in Sub-Saharan Africa
Economics of Land Degradation and Improvement in Ethiopia
Economics of Land Degradation and Improvement in Kenya
Economics of Land Degradation and Improvement in Niger
Cost, Drivers and Action Against Land Degradation in Senegal
Economics of Land Degradation and Improvement in Tanzania and Malawi
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YieldWise: How the World Can Cut Food Waste and Loss by Half

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland,  YieldWise was formally launched, a $130 million initiative to demonstrate how the world can cut food waste and loss by half by 2030.

This is the next chapter of The Rockefeller Foundation’s agriculture and food security work, which has spanned more than a century and several continents—from seeding the Green Revolution that fed a billion people across Asia and South America in the 1950s and 60s, to the work of the Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa (AGRA) (in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), over the last decade.


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India-Africa Agribusiness Forum

10-11 February 2016. New Delhi. This is in continuation to the spirit of deepening India-Africa cooperation in Agrifood sector echoed during the 3rd India-Africa Forum Summit held at New Delhi.

The 2 day international business forum had the sector experts and business leaders from across Africa and India for an action oriented agenda to unlock the potential that both India and Africa have for engaging in this sector. Following African Countries participated : Benin, Togo, Seychelles, Malawi, Gabon, Togo, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Uganda, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, DRC, Mauritania, Swaziland, Rwanda, Benin, Namibia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, and Senegal.

India is keen to extend Line of Credit (LoC) to least developed African countries for joint venture business initiatives in agriculture sector. (...) We hope to extend lines of credit to joint venture Agri-business initiatives in Africa to deepen our engagement in the agriculture sector particularly in LDCs (least developed countries) and thereby help to support food security in both our regions. (...) Initially started in four countries -- Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali, it had been extended thereafter to Malawi, Nigeria and Uganada. As agreed in the recent Africa Forum meet in New Delhi, it would be further expanded to Ghana, Togo, Tanzania and Zambia over the next five-year period. (...) Cotton is certainly an important crop in Africa as it is in India, but in many countries it continues to be exported as raw material without too much of value addition. The programme is an initiative to strengthen the cotton and textile sector in selected countries (of Africa)," Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia 
Key Themes

  • Identifying the hotspots for agri-investments
  • Commercial farming: Unlocking the land potential - need, opportunities, how and where to engage
  • Logistical infrastructure development and management
  • Agri industrialization: role of mechanisation, transforming extension services, importance of processing zones & Agriculture corridors
  • Consumer oriented production chain and value additions to integrate in global value chains
  • Innovative financing for catalysing and sustaining growth
  • Resource use efficiency
  • Research & Development
  • Opportunities for cooperation in Dairy, poultry, fisheries & aquaculture
Extract of the programme:
    Empowering Agriculture Ecosystem in Africa by leveraging Indian Innovation, Science and
    Download the Study: Right click here and choose Save Target As..
    50 pages
    Technology 
    • Innovation ecosystem in India is thriving earning the country reputation of top destination for innovation, Science and technology. The enabling infrastructure provided by the government as well as the private sector is serving as a catalyst kicking in innovations for the bottom of pyramid segment for effective and sustainable growth. 
    • A lot of these innovations are in agrifood space and given that India and Africa face similar challenges in the sector, both sides can benefit through knowledge and technology sharing. India can play a critical role in building an analogous innovation led culture in Africa. This session highlighted some key opportunities for collaboration between India and Africa in Agrifood sector with a focus of easily adaptable, affordable and accessible models. 
    • The discourse covered innovation trends in high attention areas like Seed technology, ICT in agriculture, Climate Smart agriculture, Precision agriculture, Innovative technologies for integrated pest and nutrient management, etc; explore possibility of ‘diffusion of innovations’ between India and Africa and also Identify areas of human and institutional capacity development to foster innovation and  facilitate effective dissemination of technologies
    Transforming agriculture through farm inputs and machinery: Opportunities for collaboration 
    • Modern farm inputs (improved seeds, quality fertilizers and crop protection products) and state-of-the-art machinery are critical in building productive capacities of any nation in agrifood sector. 
    • This session focused on seeds, agro-chemicals and farm machinery and  identified the existing engagements between India and Africa and going beyond, what could be the future trends. 
    • The participants deliberated on the possible partnership models that could be looked at in future both at B2B as well as B2G levels for building the transformative capacities in the sector.  
    Innovative financing for sustained growth 
    • India has over the last six decades developed various indigenous financing models that have spurred the growth of the sector and supported the marginal as well as commercial farmers. 
    • Today, when India and Africa are looking at engaging extensively in the agrifood sector, with a significant chunk of it driven by private sector, it is very pertinent toidentify the innovative sources for financing trade, joint ventures, green field investments as well as technology transfers. 
    • These finances can come from donors, development banks, commercial banks, export-import banks and even as reinvestments from farmers themselves. 
    • This session evaluated different agri-financing models adopted by India and Africa; identified successful agri-financing models in African and Indian context; helped industry understand the new ways of financing agrifood ventures and suggest imperatives for government and industry to support such models. 
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