Changing Access to Nutritious Diets in Africa and South Asia (CANDASA)

29 May 2019.  IFPRI Policy Seminar. Changing Access to Nutritious Diets in Africa and South Asia (CANDASA) has been using new food price indexes that account for food substitutions to meet nutritional needs to evaluate food systems all over the world, including in Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Malawi, and Tanzania.

This seminar presented the outcomes of CANDASA’s work to date, with a panel discussion featuring field researchers from each country to discuss the local and global implications of their results.

Speakers

• Anna Herforth, Independent Consultant
• William A. Masters, Professor, Tufts University
• Discussant: Derek Headey, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI

Panelists

• Fantu Nisrane Bachewe, Research Coordinator, IFPRI
• Yan Bai, PhD Candidate, Tufts University
• Stevier Kaiyatsa, Economist, Ministry of Finance, Planning & Development, Malawi
• Fulgence Mishili, Senior Lecturer, Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania
• Kalyani Raghunathan, Research Fellow, IFPRI
• Daniel Sarpong, Associate Professor and Dean, School of Agriculture, University of Ghana
• Kate Schneider, PhD Candidate, Tufts University

Changing Access to Nutritious Diets in Africa and South Asia (CANDASA) is an $800,000 investment over 2.5 years (December 2017 – June 2020), jointly funded by the UK Department for International Development and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, implemented by the Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts University with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and other research partners in India, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi and Tanzania.

• The project’s objective is to answer the following questions:
• How do prices and availability of nutritious foods vary over time and space, relative to wages and other earnings among those most at risk of malnutrition?
• When and where does investment in rural infrastructure and electrification, interacting with local agroecology and farming systems, improve and stabilize access to healthy diets?
• Does the variation we see in price and availability of nutrient-rich foods have significant associations with nutrition outcomes, particularly stunting and women’s nutrition?

CANDASA is the first large, multi-country study of spatial and temporal variation in the affordability of nutritious foods and its relationship to nutrition outcomes. Our results will directly inform policies and programs in our target countries, and also provide generalizable results to guide nutrition-smart investments elsewhere. The work builds directly on a Tufts-led project called Indicators of Affordability of Nutritious Diets in Africa (IANDA) funded by the UK Department for International Development from 2015 to 2017, and Advancing Research in Agriculture-Nutrition Actions (ARENA) at IFPRI funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2014 through 2020.

Related:
21 May 2019. Webinar. Food-Based Dietary Guidelines in Ethiopia and 90 other countries.

Related:
24-29 June 2019. Hyderabad, India. The 2019 ANH Academy Week The ANH Academy Week is a series of annual events that bring together the community of researchers and users of research (practitioners and policymakers) working at the intersection of agriculture, nutrition and health. The objectives of the ANH Academy Week series is to foster knowledge exchange, innovation and learning around ANH research.