On 17th and 18th March 2021, the Faculty of Agriculture played host to a stakeholder consultative and inception workshop that brought together diverse stakeholders from various government ministries, private sector actor and development partners. The inception/consultative workshop is one of the activities in a collaborative project between the University of Nairobi and the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The project’s aim is to develop and share knowledge on the understanding and practices on food quality management among stakeholders of the home-grown school meals programme. In addition, the project team which is lead by Prof. Jane Ambuko will conduct an assessment of food losses in selected supply chains linking farmers to the school feeding programme and formulate recommendations to reduce the losses.
The opening session of consultative workshop was attended by the Dean, Faculty of Agriculture, Prof. Moses Nyangito and the Acting Principal, College of Agriculture and Veterinary Sciences, Prof. Rose Nyikal. In their brief remarks, the Dean and Principal commended the project team for the initiative to address the issues affecting the homegrown school feeding program in Kenya. They challenged the team to find sustainable solutions to ensure that smallholder farmers benefit economically from the homegrown school feeding programs in Kenya. As she officially opened the workshop, Prof. Nyikal acknowledged and welcomed the stakeholders from FAO, World Food Program-Kenya, the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Labor (Social Protection Department), SNV-Kenya, 2SCALE, Partnership for Child Development (PCD), STAWI, farmer representatives and students from the University of Nairobi.
The second day of the workshop was a virtual event where the FAO-Rome lead on the project Mr. Israel Klug unpacked the FAO-Case Study Methodology for Food Loss and Waste assessment. Together with the UON lead, Prof. Ambuko, they lead the stakeholders in discussions to shed light on the planned activities and stakeholder engagement in the project. The virtual session was also attended by other project team members including Prof. John Mburu (Economics lead) and Dr. George Abong’ (Food Science/Quality lead).
- Log in to post comments
