A National Biofortification Steering Committee to serve as a high-level advocacy group for biofortification in Nigeria has been inaugurated. Staple crop biofortification is a practical, proven and demand-led response to hidden hunger—particularly amongst the hundreds of millions of smallholder farming families who eat mostly what they grow themselves and cannot afford nutritionally diverse diets. This group of people is also not easily reached by food fortification or supplementation initiatives from the government or its agencies. The inauguration was done by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security and HarvestPlus under the UKAID supported Scaling Climate Adapted Nutritious Crops in Nigeria.
It was noted that in a period of food crisis, people tend to focus more on food that will fill their stomachs and less attention to nutrition, this has the potential to worsen the already not so good nutrition outcome.
The Steering committee will serve as an advisory, advocacy and lobby group made up of policy makers, experts and stakeholders that will provide guidance on issues relating to enabling policies for biofortification in Nigeria.
The committee will also deepen the inclusion of biofortification and climate smart agriculture into government policies and programs; and use it as a strategic tool to reduce negative health outcomes associated with micronutrient deficiencies in Nigeria and this will lead to improved access to nutritious foods.
The committee will also see to the implementation of the various policies at both national and sub national levels cutting across the various biofortified crop value chains. The Country manager Harvest Nigeria, Dr Yusuf Dollah, noted that the biofortification steering committee is an advocacy platform for biofortification in Nigeria which involves high level government officials, experts within the biofortification value chain in Nigeria.
