08 Dec 2019

The Ministry of Agricultural Development and Food Security is working towards setting a centre stage for players to work together in coming up with lasting strategies of unleashing the potential of agriculture for reducing hunger, malnutrition, poverty as well as ill health.

That was said by agriculture minister, Dr Edwin Dikoloti at a high level sensitisation meeting on acceleration of ending hunger and malnutrition through the Compact 2025 initiative held in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Wellness and International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Thursday.

The meeting was intended to inform, influence and catalyse action by key holders to better use investments in agriculture in order to sustainably reduce malnutrition and ill health for vulnerable people in the country.

Dr Dikoloti indicated that malnutrition was the final outcome of a combination of determinants clustered into food, health and care which required responses from a range of fields such as food security, public health, water, sanitation, hygiene, education and social protection.

Again, he said Botswana, as a country had not yet exhausted the potential of agriculture to improve people’s nutrition, as well as their health. “Nevertheless, this outstanding issue is a mammoth task for Botswana since we already have existing structures for such initiatives on the ground so what needs to be done is to rejuvenate the existing linkages for better outcomes,” he said.

The minister said the agriculture sector needed to apply a nutrition lens to how food was produced, processed, distributed, marketed, delivered, stored, prepared for consumption and how people consumed it.

“By analysing each of these actions along the value chain for a commodity, food production programmes can shape the value chain to respond better to nutrition requirements,” he said.

Health and wellness minister, Dr Lemogang Kwape told the meeting that one in three children in Botswana were stunted with many more suffering from micro nutrient deficiencies.

“Children do not grow to their potential because of stunting as their brains become impaired thus making learning at school very difficult which simply buttress our concerted efforts in dealing with the problem,” he said.

He said accelerating stunting reduction required looking beyond the immediate causes of malnutrition to address its structural roots, hence the ministry’s decision to advocate for comprehensive tackling of social determinants of health through their Health in All Policies initiative.

“This invariably means our strategies to end hunger and malnutrition require a comprehensive, collective and a multi-sectoral approach in delivering both nutrition specific and nutrition sensitive interventions.

Minister Kwape said the IFPRI COMPACT2025 initiative would provide Botswana with technical support to build a knowledge base, as well as promote innovation and collaboration to develop, scale up and communicate policies and programmes that accelerated progress towards ending hunger and malnutrition.

Earlier, permanent secretary in the agriculture ministry, Mr Rule Opelo highlighted that there was need to create the right environment for food sustainability where nutritious food was available for everyone. He said food insecurity stood at 39 per cent, hence the need to work hard to attain food sufficiency and adequacy at household levels.

Giving an overview of the COMPACT25 initiative, IFPRI director general Dr Shenggen Fan said hunger and malnutrition remained high in Botswana despite economic growth.

Nonetheless, he said it was possible to accelerate progress given that global community had high priority on ending hunger and under nutrition.

“Through the COMPACT2025, we engaged four countries, Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda AND Bangladesh with the aim of ending malnutrition and poverty by raising greater awareness of the cross-sectoral sectors,” he said.

Also, he indicated that food nutrition and security in Botswana could be reached by building productive and resilient agriculture and food systems, adding however that water shortage and climate change were growing challenges.

He also said forming and strengthening agriculture nutrition linkages as nutrition driven agriculture had potential to advance multiple developing goals could be of assistance.ENDS