REOI: Consultancy to develop a user-friendly compendium of forgotten food commodities in Africa

04th February 2022
by secretary

Agrinatura News

REQUEST FOR EXPRESSION OF INTEREST

(INDIVIDUAL CONSULTANT)

Consulting Services:	Consultancy to develop a user-friendly compendium of forgotten food commodities in Africa
Name of Project:	FARA/FAO-RAF
Activity Ref No:	GF.RAFTD.RA4030226HP00.5575
Procurement Ref:	FARA/CS/IC/2022/01
Date:	Monday, January 31, 2022 : Submission deadline February 14, 2022

Food and nutritional security are significant developmental challenges in recent times. Africa is recorded to have the highest number of malnourished populations globally; Africa was estimated to have a 19.1 percent prevalence of undernourishment (PoU, 2019). There is the need for an accelerated approach and coordination at the continental level to provide solutions to these problems and advance necessary action to achieve the zero-hunger target.

A recent report indicated that Africa is home to diversified indigenous food commodities, that are well adapted to the environment and thrive well with little or no external inputs. These indigenous foods offer dietary diversity and are potent sources of micro and macronutrients. However, they have received little or no research and development attention towards their genetic improvement, value addition, and marketing. This earned them the label, “Neglected or forgotten food commodities”.

The Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) has identified forgotten food as a potential source of solutions to ending hunger, malnutrition, and other dietary challenges in Africa. FARA and its partners proposed to carry out scoping studies, stakeholders’ engagement, and other activities to identify and characterize forgotten food commodities with the potential to be mainstreamed into the food system. To carry out this assignment, FARA requires the services of a consultant to support its staff in carrying out specific activities.

The overall objective of the assignment is to re-integrate the African indigenous, forgotten, and underutilized food commodities into the emerging food systems for sustainable food and nutritional security.

This request for expression of interest aims at engaging a consultant to carry out the following functions:

1. Carry out a systematic review and consultations to define the scope of traditional or forgotten foods. This will include the moderation of a D-group discussion to define what forgotten food is and what it is not, and/or a more apt term to describe the kinds of foods referred to as forgotten.
2. Draw a list of important forgotten foods and prioritize at least 100 common traditional food crops based on geographic coverage, nutritional density, other environmental and cultural values, and cross-cultural acceptability.
3. Undertake a desk review on the nutritional information for the identified forgotten food commodities and compile their nutritional values.
4. Coordinate the analysis to validate the nutritional value of the identified 100 food commodities.
5. Develop a compendium of the nutritional content, availability, accessibility, and utilization of common indigenous foods in the four sub-regions of sub-Saharan Africa. The analysis will include their environmental and economic benefits; it will be developed into a user-friendly format that documents at least 100 commodities. The compendium will be made with high-resolution images and succinct information on each commodity.
6. Facilitate stakeholder’s dialogue to validate the compendium of Forgotten Foods in Africa.

The detailed terms of reference are in the link below:

Terms of Reference for a Consultancy on Forgotten Foods

More details about this opportunity can be find here

REOI: Consultancy to develop a user-friendly compendium of forgotten food commodities in Africa

REQUEST FOR EXPRESSION OF INTEREST

(INDIVIDUAL CONSULTANT)

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