Introduction

The Africa Day for Food and Nutrition Security (ADFNS) was declared in July 2010 by the African Union Heads of State and Government (at the 15^th Ordinary Session of the AU Summit) in Kampala, Uganda. This decision was made in recognition of the unacceptable and chronic crisis of hunger and malnutrition in Africa. The first ADFNS was successfully launched in Lilongwe, Malawi, on 31^st October 2010. Since then the ADFNS has been commemorated six times with the last edition taking place in Kampala, Uganda, from 28 to 30 October 2015.

The main purpose of the ADFNS is to serve as a platform for rallying political and financial commitments at all levels to address contemporary challenges of food and nutrition insecurity in Africa. The event provides a platform at national, regional and continental levels to share experiences, knowledge and mutual learning, as well as measure progress in assuring food and nutrition security for all by governments and multi-stakeholder partners.

The aim of this concept note is to provide pertinent information on the commemoration of the October 2016 ADFNS, including its proposed theme and sub-themes. It also provides background information on the theme and sub-themes of the event.

Purpose and Objectives

The main objective for commemorating this year’s ADFNS is to motivate commitments by decision and policy makers and all relevant actors to deliberately prioritise investment in nutrition in development planning, resource allocations and programme implementation. The CAADP Framework for Africa’s Food Security calls for scaling up investment in food security on the continent. To this end, the event is specifically aimed at:

1. Focusing on infant and young child feeding, create a common awareness of investing in nutritious, safe, sustainable and healthy food value chains to enhance food and nutrition security that will impact on the worrying trends in child stunting in Africa;
2. Create a common and complementary investments in nutrition sensitive and specific interventions, through mutlisectoral approaches aimed at addressing childhood stunting as an important measure to impacting the survival of the African child;
3. Facilitate dialogue among stakeholders, sharing of experiences, best practices, innovations and mutual learning among various stakeholders on options for investing in direct and indirect nutrition interventions in order to eliminate child under nutrition in Africa;
4. Advocating for the scale up of proven and cost effective child sensitive nutrition interventions for maximum impact; and
5. Documenting and preparing a set of recommendations to inform action planning and the way forward.

Expected Outcomes

The expected outcomes to emanate from the event will be:

1. Increased appreciation of the importance of investing in nutrition for childhood development and its central role in attaining economic prosperity and sustainable development.
2. Substantive and persistent political commitment to invest in and implement child sensitive nutrition intervention. Particular attention will be paid to how to leverage forthcoming high level events (e.g. the Rio Nutrition for Growth Summit in Rio de Janeiro) to bear on improved nutrition for the African child and to better deliver engage partners in the Decade of Nutrition and Africa Leader’s Initiative on Nutrition.

Structure of the commemoration

Member States may have only a half- to one-day public event. The continental commemoration of the ADFNS will be conducted in three days as follows:

Day 1: Pre-events:

The first day of the commemoration of the ADFNS will be dedicated to side events by partners and stakeholders to showcase their products, services and/or successful interventions. The demand for this dedicated day is arose from the success of the 6^th commemoration of the ADFNS in Kampala, Uganda. This open day provides an opportunity for participants and members of the public to appreciate the role of organisations committed to the fight against hunger and malnutrition. It affords a true demonstration of the “walking the talk” mantra.

Day 2: Technical seminar/symposium

As usual a technical symposium will precede the main commemorative event, which will feature deliberations along the above-listed sub-themes. The day will also be used to reflect on recommendations of previous commemorations of the ADFNS and actions/responses taken since then to inform future direction. Summary and key recommendations from this event will be presented in the Main Event.

Day 3: The Main Event - Commemoration of ADFNS 2016.

The main event will feature official opening remarks, keynote address, panel discussions guided by the sub-themes and other activities as agreed by the Steering Committee of the event. It will also feature highlights of the summary of the pre-event.