The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has hosted a three-day stakeholder consortium in Accra to discuss ways of improving nutrition under the Healthy Food Africa (HFA) project.

HFA is an EU Horizon 2020 collaborative research and development actions project which is intended to strengthen the diversity, sustainability and connectivity of food systems to provide more sustainable ways of producing food and boosting efficiency.

Speaking in an interview with Citi News on the aim of the consortium, the Leader of the HFA Project for CSIR, Dr. Seth Koranteng Agyakwah explained that, “there are about 10 food systems in Africa and these are countries or communities that have unique contexts of specific food system challenges who want to improve upon the current situation and to make the food system more sustainable.

“These countries are Ghana, Benin, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and Ethiopia. Some of the countries have issues with poor sustainability of their crop production, fish production, small animal production or the integration of either of these so,we are finding solutions to making food systems better and assuring food security and it goes along with the employment value chain, businesses etc”.

He explained that, two institutes of the CSIR; the Water Research Institute and Food Research Institute are working on the Accra food system laboratory to look at the food system when it comes to the food value chain.

According to him, training programmes are held with farmers to ensure that food production and processing are safe and healthy for consumers to prevent cancer-causing agents.

Dr. Agyakwah hinted that, new products are being developed and as soon as it is optimized, it will be taken to the market.

In all, there are 13 countries-7 European, 6 African countries working together on the HFA project.