Delegation visit to Sierra Leone for the 4th meeting of the Lead Expert Group
The rationale for the Global Panel project on Strengthening resilience in the transformation of food systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries in Africa is the ever-increasing threats to food systems and sustainable healthy diets in sub-Saharan Africa. These threats include climate change, local and distant conflicts, and the growing debt crisis. Such challenges continue to threaten both food and nutrition security, as well as the transformation of food systems which are needed to address longer-term challenges around sustainability, equality and health. The project, which focuses on Ethiopia, Malawi, and Sierra Leone, is just past the halfway mark and a final report will be produced towards the end of 2024. This progress update sets out what has been achieved to date and provides details of the recent visit of the project team to Sierra Leone.
A Lead Expert Group (LEG) was established in January under the chairpersonship of Professor Evan Fraser, Director of Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph. It comprises leading experts and policymakers from the focus countries as well as international experts. The LEG has established a comprehensive framework for evaluating the resilience of food system transformation based on the concept of ‘lines of defence’ which may have general applicability. Using this resilience framework, the country teams are in the process of devising and implementing detailed work plans, the outputs of which will be a set of recommendations for their respective countries. The integral role of government officials is to ensure that the project’s recommendations are realistic, command support from all relevant parts of government, and are positioned for immediate action. In addition, as part of the analysis, the LEG will carry out a foresight-type exercise assessing future scenarios and threats.
A delegation comprising LEG members and the Global Panel Secretariat visited Sierra Leone between 21st April and 26th April 2024. On the 22nd of April, the LEG held its fourth meeting in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Holding the meeting in the country allowed members to better understand the policy landscape and challenges facing food system transformation in Sierra Leone, to meet with a wide range of stakeholders and to seek support from senior officials and ministers for the project.
On the 23rd of April, a Roundtable, organised by Dr Patrick Kormawa from the Presidential Initiative on Climate Change, Renewable Energy, and Food Security, LEG member from Sierra Leone, was held in Freetown with stakeholders from relevant national government departments, development agencies, research institutions and the private sector. A key objective of the Roundtable was to identify ways to build food system resilience in Sierra Leone with a focus on the flagship Feed Salone, The Blueprint for Agricultural Transformation in Sierra Leone initiative. A key conclusion from the Roundtable was the recognition that a much greater emphasis on improving dietary diversity and healthy diets as well as increasing the resilience of the food system was urgently needed. This could be organised in a variety of ways for example as an addition to the Feed Salone programme which has the primary purpose of increasing national production of specific crops, or as a related but separate initiative.
The delegation was honoured to meet with the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Hon. Henry Musa Kpaka, and the Chief Minister, Dr David Moinina Sengeh, to discuss new opportunities to strengthen resilience in food systems in the context of the Government’s flagship Feed Salone strategy and the Global Panel’s project.
The Global Panel Secretariat also held a series of productive bilateral meetings with Mr Aidan Fitzpatrick, Ambassador of Ireland to Sierra Leone, the Ministry of Higher Education, the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, and representatives from the European Commission Delegation. In these bilateral meetings, the main points of discussion focused on increasing the availability and accessibility of sustainable, healthy diets to improve nutritional outcomes through a range of interventions.
The Global Panel is also exploring the possibility of further work which will build on the current project. This additional project would focus on three further African countries within a regional cluster in which their respective food systems are strongly interlinked. This will enable much deeper consideration of the linkages between national food systems, especially through trade and how they can be exploited to further strengthen food system resilience.
