Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 3 October 2022. The Africa Rice Center (AfricaRice) and the Regional Center of Excellence against Hunger and Malnutrition (CERFAM) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, on 30 September 2022, that aims to foster collaboration for the promotion of policies, strategies, and actions to end hunger, poverty, and malnutrition in Africa.
Through this cooperation, AfricaRice and CERFAM intend to work on programs that seek to enhance food security and nutrition and improve the livelihoods of vulnerable communities.
These planned joint activities will contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), particularly SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) and the aspirations of the African Union’s Agenda 2063, thereby placing smallholder farmers and other actors of the rice value chain at the center of the shared commitment to ending hunger and malnutrition in all its forms in the continent.
“Smallholder rice farmers and consumers in sub-Saharan Africa often suffer from hidden hunger that can cause severe damage to their health,” said Dr Harold Roy-Macauley, Managing Director for Regions and Partnership, CGIAR, and Director General of AfricaRice.
“We are therefore delighted to sign this partnership agreement with CERFAM to generate and disseminate sustainable solutions to combat food insecurity and malnutrition and help ensure that rice can contribute to the healthy diets of consumers,” he added.
This MoU provides a cooperation framework enabling the two institutions to jointly plan and implement specific activities and exchange information and technical expertise in areas of common scientific, technical, and programmatic interest.
The two institutions will also strengthen synergies and leverage complementarities between African countries through South-South cooperation, and jointly mobilize resources from public donors, foundations, and other funding sources.
“This strategic partnership between CERFAM and AfricaRice will support African countries in the implementation of regional and continental priorities, through leveraging research, advocacy and technical assistance projects in the field of food security, nutrition and food systems, particularly in strengthening national and regional rice value chains,” said Patrick Teixeira, interim Director of CERFAM.
“For CERFAM, AfricaRice is a partner of choice for evidence generation, knowledge sharing and promotion of good practices for their replication and scale up to bring about high-impact and innovative solutions to smallholder farmers and other actors of the agri-food value chains,” he concluded.
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About CERFAM
CERFAM is a catalyst and facilitator of good practices and innovative solutions generated or adapted to the African context. The Centre pursues its mission to transform research, policy dialogue, knowledge management, technical assistance and advocacy against hunger and malnutrition into opportunities to advance the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 in Africa, through South-South cooperation and capacity strengthening.
About AfricaRice
Africa Rice Center (AfricaRice) is a pan-African Center of Excellence for rice research, development and capacity building. It contributes to reducing poverty, achieving food and nutrition security and improving livelihoods of farmers and other rice value-chain actors in Africa by increasing the productivity and profitability of rice-based agri-food systems, while ensuring the sustainability of natural resources. AfricaRice is a CGIAR Research Center — part of a global research partnership for a food-secure future. It is also an intergovernmental association of 28 African member countries. AfricaRice headquarters is based in Côte d’Ivoire. Staff members are located in Côte d’Ivoire and in AfricaRice research stations in Liberia, Madagascar, Nigeria, Senegal and Uganda. For more information, visit www.AfricaRice.org
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For more information, please contact:
Marina MEA, Communication Officer, CERFAM, marina.mea@wfp.org
Savitri Mohapatra, Marketing and Communications Expert, AfricaRice, s.mohapatra@cgiar.org
