MULTISTAKEHOLDER PARTNERSHIPS TO FINANCE AND IMPROVE FOOD SECURITY AND NUTRITION IN THE FRAME WORK OF THE 2030 AGENDA
Brief outline
Stake holders in the food security and nutrition includes; communities in various categories in the rural, urban, fishermen, Pastoralists etc. These people are faced with various challenges; environmental degradation and depletion, soil and water erosion. Pests and disease outbreaks in crops and animals, income and Multidimensional poverty. Climate change, drought, floods, and conflicts over food production resources.
Each of these challenges has a bearing on food security and nutrition.
In most cases the communities may not be able to address the food insecurity and nutrition especially where there is poor food production and utilization.
It takes the intervention of all stake holders and partners to address the situation. These are National Governments, Non Governmental Organisations (NGO’S), UN Agencies- FAO/WFP, UNICEF, faith based Organisations, financial Institutions and Donors.
The intervention of these stakeholders depends on situation prevailing at that particular moment. There are also International, regional and national banks. Locally people have developed Village savings and loan associations (VSLA) to address the input acquisition at small scales i.e. farmer levels. This coupled with trade policies international and regional Markets play roles in food security and nutrition.
Most lending institutions like banks need collaterals to lend money for food production which the rural people don’t have. The land which is their only assets has no titles and cannot access the funds for food production and Nutrition. Most of the land is owned communally or customarily. Most of the lending Institutions believe that agriculture is a risky venture. When actually this is an engine of food security and nutrition.
The local foods are very rich in food quality but due to lack or poor Education preparation of these foods needs a lot to be done. On the other side there is lack of Home economics experts to handle crucial role of putting quality food on the table. Storage of food is a bigger problem as in Karamoja Region of Uganda 40% of the food is lost in the storage.
All the stakeholders and Partners are supposed to play their roles to ensure that food is accessible at all times otherwise we run the risk of conflicts in communities that do not have food.
As I have mentioned above some parameters like poverty, both income and multidimensional has to be addressed, Education of the community has to be encouraged to increase the level of understanding to cope with development challenges. The standard of living has to be addressed too.
Without this we may be addressing symptoms and leave the root course of food security and nutrition.
Despite the above there have been a number of successes made by multistakeholders and partners which we cannot ignore. Also there have been failures due to challenges arising from hostile operational environments. These will be made clear during the interactions.
We hope to achieve 2030 agenda by working tirelessly as a team.
Abura Levi
District Production and Marketing Coordination Kotido
Ministry of Agriculture Animal Industries and Fisheries in Uganda
Abura LeviAbura Levi