Dr. George Mavrotas, Head of IFPRI Abuja Office and Leader of IFPRI’s Nigeria Strategy Support Program (NSSP), was invited to participate in The Food Systems for Healthier Diets Research Flagship (FSHD) – Nigeria Stakeholder Planning Meeting. The workshop was organized by the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) led by IFPRI, and IITA at the IITA Headquarters in Ibadan on 27-29 March 2017. The Stakeholder meeting was organized as part of the flagship program Food Systems for Healthier Diets (FSHD). The FSHD aims to understand how changes in food systems can lead to healthier diets and to identify and test key food system innovations at agreed national priorities and to provide an enabling environment by which private food system actors are enabled and healthy food system solutions are scaled and anchored.
The objectives of the workshop were to:
- Identify and review trends, knowledge gaps, opportunities, priorities and ongoing activities for improving diets through sustainable food system pathways in Nigeria;
- Develop a common understanding on how FSHD fits within Nigeria’s national development agenda and strategy;
- Identify key public and private-sector partners and brainstorm on their potential role in FSHD implementation;
- Define essential mechanisms for effective research collaboration;
- Brainstorm and outline a plan for 2017 activities among CGIAR and other international and national partners.
Dr. Mavrotas was also invited to join the Nigeria Country Coordination Committee for the implementation of the initiative in Nigeria and he had various meetings as part of the workshop with the rest of the members of the Nigeria Country Coordination Committee toward the preparation of the workplan for the above initiative in Nigeria. The workshop was attended by more than 50 participants from Nigeria and the rest of the world, including senior government officials, nutrition experts, representatives from the donor community, academia, private sector and development partners.
