AERC, CBN collaborate to tackle nutrition, food challenges at senior policy seminar

Food and nutrition security dominated discussions at the just concluded Senior Policy Seminar hosted by the African Economic Research Consortium, AERC, in partnership with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

The two-day conference, which held from March 9 to 10, 2020, and was supported, by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, had the theme: ‘Agriculture and Food Policies for Better Nutrition Outcomes in Africa’.

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Prof. Njunguna Ndung’u, the Executive Director of AERC, in his opening address, emphasised that the seminar focused on Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition Outcomes in Africa because agriculture is the main stay of most economies and contributes to wealth, economic activity, employment and nutrition welfare outcomes.

He added that most policies and initiatives in this area have tended to focus on, and to target, agricultural production metrics, and do not directly relate to nutrition outcome and targets or actual food consumption.

“Global Panel of Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition points out, that there is a dearth of quality data to properly inform policies on nutrition. This has tended to limit the effectiveness of agricultural policies in improving nutrition outcomes. In addition to data challenges, there has been a lack of high-quality policy analyses that explore the effect of agricultural policies on nutrition. We need now to combine forces to achieve the best nutrition outcomes,” he said.

Ndung’u also reiterated that AERC will continually focus on quality research and strengthen policy influence. The AERC, known for training policymakers across Africa, is dedicated to strengthening capacity building for conducting policy-oriented research, policy analyses and informed policy.
Currently, the organisation has select universities that run their programmes in Policy Making for students at both Masters degree and PhD levels.  Some of these partnering institutions are University of Ibadan, University of Benin, University of Dare Salaam, The University of Cape Town and the University of Nairobi.