African Agriculture @ UNGA 73 and Global Goals Week (1)

23-29 September 2018. New York. Food systems, hunger and nutrition received a great deal of attention during Global Goals Week.

It started with a multimedia exhibit on ‘Tech and the end of hunger’ presented by the World Food Programme (WFP), Global Pulse, and the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD).

• With support of the Innovation Accelerator, WFP is training smallholder farmers in Uganda on how to use improved post-harvest handling methods, combined with simple but effective hermetic storage equipment. The equipment—which is subsidized—is both air and water tight, helping to guard against insects, rodents, mould, and moisture.
  
  
  
• Refugees in Chad are building low-tech hydroponics units to grow fresh animal fodder and
  
  fight hunger. WFP is exploring hydroponic solutions to reinforce food assistance activities in Chad. Local innovators, alongside WFP experts, are currently growing fresh fodder with the aim to increase the production of milk and meat and improve people’s nutrition. To render the initiative sustainable over time, Chadian innovators identified and sourced local materials for the hydroponics units.
  
  The project in Chad builds on WFP’s experience at the Sahrawi refugee camps of Algeria, where simple hydroponic production units using only local materials are used to grow fresh fodder for their goats. Similar environmental conditions have inspired this venture.