25 April 2019. Gent, Belgium. Several lectures are organized on the SDGs and the Global South. With this initiative Ghent University hopes to reach students from all faculties to join and learn about global challenges and opportunities we face and to stimulate them to engage in finding solutions.

1. Sustainable Development Goals, nutrition
and health: where are we now?
Sustainable Development Goals & the Global South@Ghent University
Session 7, 25 April 2019
Habiba Hassan-Wassef, MD
e-mail: bio_egypt@hotmail.com

2. OUTLINE
• Why the SDGs ?
• The sustainable development dimension
• Nutrition, from biology to multi-disciplinary
• Diet related health problems from vitamin and micronutrient
deficiencies, to diet and life and style or diet and the immune system
• Food and Planet Health
• Domains of interest for nutrition related research
• Food security and nutrition in Africa, update on some major initiatives
• Challenges to Africa’s food security and nutrition

5. NOURISHING
THE SDGs
Source: Development
Initiatives, 2017. Global
Nutrition Report 2017:
Nourishing the SDGs. Bristol,
UK: Development Initiatives.

6. The birth and evolution of Nutrition
Justus von Liebig (mid 19th Century)
The Giessen Declaration1
and
the New Nutrition Project
Source: Cannon G et al. “The Giessen Declaration”. Public Health Nutrition, 2005; 8(6A): 783–6.

7. Excerpt from the New Nutrition Project
Source: Cannon G et al. “The Giessen Declaration”. Public Health Nutrition, 2005; 8(6A): 783–6.

8. Nutrition Science

9. Conceptual framework of the food security system
Source: Olivier Ecker and Clemens Breisinger: “The Food Security System: A New Conceptual
Framework”, IFPRI Discussion Paper 01166, 2012.

10. www.thelancet.com

11. Overlapping circles of
sustainability defined at World
Conservation Congress in
Bangkok, Thailand, November
2004.
Source: cited in, “Economic growth and
sustainability – are they mutually exclusive?
Striking a balance between unbounded
economic growth and sustainability requires a
new mindset”, Karen L. Higgins, ELSEVIER,
Posted on 16 May 2013

12. http://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/Depletion-of-Natural-Resources

13. Food forms an inextricable link between human health
and environmental sustainability
Source: Our Food in The Anthropocene: Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, 2019.
“Food Planet Health” Summary Report of the EAT-Lancet Commission www.thelancet.com

14. Strategy of the global
non-profit EAT
Foundation to achieve
its vision for a fair and
sustainable food
system for healthy
people and planet
Source: “Food Planet Health” Summary
Report of the EAT-Lancet Commission
www.thelancet.com

15. Examples of domains of interest in
nutrition related research
• Diet and the immune system
• Diet and cancer
• Nutrigenomics, recent ground breaking domains for research
• Impact on health and nutrition of environmental contaminants/toxins
• Intra-cell metabolic pathways
• Metabolic pathways for micronutrients
• Etiology of stunting and the malabsorption syndrome
• Econometric methods for calculating cost of hunger and related diseases
• Food choices and the food environment
• Food systems for healthy diets

16. Food security and nutrition in Africa
(update on some of the ongoing activities)
• African Union Commission – African Development Bank
“African Leaders for Nutrition Initiative” for increasing investment in
• Introduction of Africa’s new Food Safety Index (2019)
• Scorecards used for monitoring progress in food security and nutrition
• Building Africa’s Grey Matter Infrastructure initiative for reduction of the stunting
rates recognized as a deterrent to acceleration of Africa’s economic growth: “Stunted
children lead to a stunted economy…” quote from President Adesina, AfDB
• Implementation of the food security and nutrition related commitments in the 3rd
Africa Science, Technology and Innovation Forum Declaration of 2018
• Advances continue to be made in the implementation of the Scaling Up Nutrition
programme initiated in 2012
• Initiatives to achieve Continental coverage by the growing number of scientific
Centers of Excellence that are currently of a regional nature

17. Some of the challenges slowing improvement of Africa’s
Food Security & Nutrition
? Potential areas for North-South collaboration
• Insufficient qualified nutrition professionals in all categories
• Academic institutions and curriculums to be strengthened
• Unequal research capacity and technological platforms across African countries
• Capacity and ability for uptake of research outcomes/evidence for policy formulation
needs to be strengthened
• Limited focus of research efforts on identification and valorization of Africa’s rich
biodiversity and food heritage to be exploited as one of strategies for improving food
security (a commitment in the 2018 Cairo Declaration)
• Research is needed to help the uptake by the food industry of nutrient-rich African
foods adapting them to the preferences of the modern consumer, together with
protection of IPR and respect of conformity with international norms and standards
• Safe early childhood complementary feeding products using local ingredients
• Efficient food supply chains & retail systems for feeding urban population in mega-cities

18. Example of role of
academia in support of
nutrition capacity
building through the
Scaling Up Nutrition
platforms and alliances
Source: “Contribution to scaling up
nutrition Academic Platform to nutrition
capacity strengthening in Africa: local
efforts, continental challenges and
prospects”, Laar AK, et al, Proceedings of
the Nutrition Society, June, 2017,

19. Source: Our Food in The Anthropocene: Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, 2019.
“Food Planet Health” Summary Report of the EAT-Lancet Commission www.thelancet.com