Capacity Building in Food security for Africa – CaBFoodS-Africa

University of Nairobi Focus Area: Capacity Building in Postharvest Management
Work package A3: Training on the reduction of post-harvest losses 
Rationale: The term ‘Postharvication’ has recently been proposed and promoted as an integrated and comprehensive strategy to advocate for greater investments in education, research and application of innovative technologies and policies to improve the efficiency of food supply chains. This includes reducing losses and waste by developing diverse and value-added nutritious and safe food and other agro-based products, and facilitating trade and exchange through better quality control and assurance. Postharvication as a strategy for realizing the value of increased productivity argues that we must save the harvest and the investments already made in agricultural production. Postharvication must therefore be mainstreamed into the Agricultural Transformation and Industrialization Agendas of Africa.

The action will focus on: a) building capacity of practitioners in the food supply chain including farmers, traders, transporters, and everybody else involved in the supply chain through targeted training; b) building capacity of education institutions through formal training of practitioners. This will include new curricula to enhance postharvest training in tertiary institutions, review of existing curricula to strengthen postharvest training and development of short courses targeting practitioners in the food supply chain.

Work package B1: Take stock and identify appropriate post-harvest practises and technologies to scale-up
Rationale: According to FAO (2011), thirty percent (30%) or 1.3 billion metric tons (MT) of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted in the food supply chain. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, the total quantitative food loss has been estimated to be over 100 million MT/year. From the foregoing, there is urgent need for a paradigm shift from simply increasing food production through extensification and intensification strategies to more emphasis on better postharvest management and utilization of the food produced.

This proposed situational analysis seeks to provide a platform for stakeholder engagement aimed at finding effective strategies to address the problem of high postharvest losses in the African context. Specifically, this action will focus on taking stock of the already existing, applicable and appropriate technologies, as well as solutions for the different value chains. A reference data base for the three focal countries with a view of scaling-up successes will be established. Desktop reviews, key informant interviews and field studies to document information of existing/applicable technologies and highlight the key success factors will be conducted.