AU-EU Combatting all forms of malnutrition
Proposals are expected to address the following:
- Mapping and monitoring of dietary patterns at national/regional/rural/urban levels relevant to different socio-economic and cultural groups, including low-income settings, the most vulnerable, rural food environments and for those in conflict or protracted-crisis situations to better understand what people are eating and how they make food choices.
- Contribute to standardised metrics and tools to measure the food environment. In many food systems the absence of formal channels to acquire food lead to a dynamic, self-sufficiency and unregulated retail food environment with a large proportion of informal food vendors. This results in enormous variety in metrics in terms of reference points (i.e. food accessibility), media coverage (i.e. food promotion) and level of implementation (i.e. policies).
- Improved knowledge and measurement of the factors influencing dietary behaviour in selected African countries, and development of effective means for each food system actor to share food knowledge and improve food behaviour.
- Assessment of the value of and potential for scaling-up of sustainable traditional food knowledge based on access to biodiverse agro-ecological situations.
- Assessment of innovations to improve nutrition, driven by a deep understanding of the unmet nutritional needs, aspirations, behaviours and preferences of consumers who remain underserved by markets and face limited access to affordable nutritious foods.
- Innovative and effective tools to improve education, communication, engagement and training on sustainable healthy nutrition and diets, and more generally on sustainable food systems adapted to different population groups in respect of their age, culture and needs and considering gender.
- Provision of a scientific basis for sharing food knowledge and developing dietary advice to support policy makers to empower individuals to adopt healthy and sustainable food behaviour, as a win-win for both their health and the environment.
- Supporting the development of new integrated policy-making and implementation efforts such as the scaling-up nutrition initiative within and across countries (at multiple levels). This will support healthier and sustainable dietary behaviours and lifestyles with the provision of innovative, efficient, effective, evidence-based and ready-to-use tools/strategies including cost-benefit assessment of the different options proposed.
- Contributing to the mapping and monitoring of mycotoxin effects in unsafe foods and diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) to better understand the relationship between lifestyle (including mycotoxin levels, diets, nutrition and alcohol), gender, geographical, socioeconomic and environmental factors, biological parameters, and the risk of development of diet related NCDs.
- Development of innovative and effective policies/strategies/tools contributing to reduce dietary and health inequalities as precursors of NCDs, in particular in vulnerable population groups.
- A space for mentoring and acceleration of innovative business concepts, including social innovation and upscaling for promising approaches using cascading funding opportunities.
- When relevant, creating links to and using the information and data of the European Earth observation programme Copernicus, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the global Earth observation system of systems (GEOSS).
- Include a clear plan on collaboration with other projects selected under this topic, other nutrition related EU projects and similar projects funded under the EU-AU HLPD-FNSSA priority from different funding sources including Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe, ERA-Nets, African Union research grants, DeSIRA or PRIMA. They should contribute to the work of the FNSSA-working group (WG) by linking to the LEAP4FNSSA project supporting the FNSSA-WG secretariat. They should participate in joint activities, workshops, and communication and dissemination activities and show potential for upscaling. Applicants should plan the necessary funding to cover these activities.
- Social innovation is recommended when the solution is at the socio-technical interface and requires social change, new social practices, social ownership or market uptake. This topic should involve the effective contribution of SSH disciplines.