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I'm
the my name is Mpule Kwelagobe and I'm the founder and CEO of the
Institute for indigenous development
and we focus on agricultural development in Africa
I think a lot of key issues that were pointed out today one being gender
and the importance of mainstreaming gender in agricultural development
but in talking by gender as well it was really a conversation about smallholders
at the grassroot level um since our work focuses on
on Africa that's really what I can speak most about
um so i think is about gender it's really about putting smallholders and
most of them being
female farmers at the center of all agricultural development
I think another kee thing that everybody pointed out was innovation technology
and science
and the role that science is going to play in this. Nutrition again was a
very key issue that
we should not really be thinking exclusively about food security
would really thinking about nutrition and I think a lot of speakers broke down
nutrition in different ways, right?
so you were listening to doctor shapiro from moes and he's talking about
crop um you know nutrition about fortification of crops
and talking about targeting a hundred crops to be fit that they feel
they need to um boost the you know nutrition capacity of those crops
um so people point out different things I think it's going to be about
innovation it's going to be about technology science wasn't
big seen as well by technology it's about accepting science because I think
sometimes what we see in terms of the dialogue out there is people being very
resistant
to science have been very resistant to biotechnology
but at the same time we have these food insecurity and chronic
food insecurity and chronic hunger and malnutrition
that needs to be addressed and science is gonna play a very important role in
innovation
so we came out of doing fifteen years of work in health systems in sub-saharan
Africa
our focus was on ***-aids and
you know as you do work with *** AIDS initially for us
you know it was really about getting medication to people that getting
medication to
women especially between the ages of 15 and 49
because that was the demographic that was most likely to be
a impacted by *** aids but
it quickly turned out that you know one of the big things about taking ***
medication is that you also need to be able to eat healthy
and it was something that kept coming up again is that
for women not only do they need to eat healthy but the very first reason why
they were able to contract the virus is because of lack of economic
opportunities
the majority of
agricultural producers in Africa are in fact women who produce
eighty percent of the food in the continent and yet women are both
likely to be the ones infected with *** but also they're likely to be the ones
suffering from malnutrition and so this is how we can to agricultural development
was really realizing that we need to focus on
either on our side doing advocacy for more
investments going toward women in agricultural development or for us
ourselves to directly invest in rural women as we a way of mitigating
***
food security is basic to who we are I mean after
you know air that we breathe and what we drink the next most important
thing for human survival is food
um it's not just about just food is in people just want to eat
it really you know food is the building block of who you are as a person
when are really beginning to understand impact of vitamin and mineral deficiency
you know what they also referred to as hidden hunger and we're understanding the
irreversible impact that it has in the first 1,000 days
of a child's life it can lead to stunting it can lead to
other physiological damages. And we're understanding that you know
when a woman
is a is suffering from malnutrition she's much more likely to give birth to
a baby that is
underweight and that is suffering from malnutrition um so what we're really now
understanding at a basic level
but when it comes to maternal care when it comes to newborn care
is really about nutrition it's about a food security
so we know what you even look at the Nexus of it when you look at
agriculture
you cannot separate agriculture from food security from nutrition
from health from human development. human development in fact is about nutrition
and food security