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Front row left to right: Roger Tuckeldoe, Nigel Sunley. Back row: Tshidi Moroka, Nomusa Dlamini and Professors Milla McLachlan, Amanda Minnaar and Andre Oelofse
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The Southern Education Research Alliance (SERA) task team on food, health and nutrition, a strategic alliance between the CSIR and the University of Pretoria, held a workshop at the CSIR Knowledge Commons in February 2010.
The aim of the workshop was to form a collaborative team to improve food security issues in southern Africa and at a later stage also in the rest of Africa. The team will focus on projects to improve access to safe and nutritious food, source funding for such projects and strategise on the way forward. The team will also be tasked with creating a database of experts who can play a significant role in food security in Africa.
Delegates at the workshop included local and southern African representatives from academic institutions, research councils, private sector, government departments, regional research institutes and small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs). The aim was to draw on the expertise of all relevant role players in addressing food security issues in South Africa.
In his welcome address, Dr Thulani Dlamini, CSIR Group Executive: Research and Development, emphasised the importance of a collaborative network to address challenges facing food security in southern Africa. "This interface is important for both developing and developed countries in terms of addressing critical issues such as food security, malnutrition, communicable and non-communicable diseases related to nutrition. The expertise that exists outside the SERA task team is important to this newly identified platform. I therefore encourage you to fully participate in the deliberations to realise the objectives of the workshop," he said.
The keynote address on challenges facing South Africa and Africa in the interface of food, nutrition and health was delivered by Nigel Sunley, a private consultant from Sunley Consulting, and Roger Tuckeldoe from the national Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Sunley did a SWOT analysis of the South African food and nutrition needs, and suggested the best way to leverage the opportunities in the context of the strengths, weaknesses and threats, using case studies to support his ideas. In his presentation, he stressed that food and nutrition are the key components to achieving food security. "The opportunities and existing areas of strength need to be debated as we take this initiative forward," said Nigel.
In outlining the challenges ahead, Tuckeldoe gave a detailed background to food security. He referred to the United Nations universal declaration that recognises the right to food as a universal human right and which led to several summits and declarations that ratified and made the right to food a binding international law. The South African government, according to Tuckeldoe, has responded progressively to these declarations with a number of socio-economic and political frameworks that include, but are not limited to the reconstruction and development programme. "The South African government has approved the Integrated Food Security Strategy (IFSS) to streamline, harmonise and integrate diverse food security programmes into one comprehensive strategy to improve food security and nutrition in South Africa," said Roger.
The SERA task team elected will consolidate the information presented at the workshop and prepare a report that will serve as a blueprint for identifying collaboration partners and funding opportunities for the region.
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