Bending the curve – Africa’s unfolding agrifood system and diet transformation
SIANI – SLU Global joint workshop
Organization of the Workshop:
In conjunction with the upcoming Uppsala Health Summit 2016, a pre-conference workshop with invited specialists working with these issues from a policy, advocacy and research perspective have been invited to share their expertise and diverse perspectives.
The workshop is organized around three themes:
- Adolescent Perceptions on Diet, Physical Activity, Body Size, and Obesity in Botswana (Rural-urban transition)
- Impact of Maternal Nutrition Deprivation and Later Life Chronic Non-communicable Disease Risk as Part of the Nutrition Transition
- Capacity for Scaling Up Nutrition Interventions—Lessons from West Africa
Short presentations will be made in plenary to highlight key issues and possible gaps requiring further understanding.
Participants attending this workshop are expected to identify one of the three themes around which they will form groups for discussion. After the presentations, participants will have one hour to discuss and share experiences relating to their particular theme. The final outputs of the group discussions should be specific questions to be addressed in the forthcoming Uppsala Health Summit in a workshop session “Migration and the Food Environment”.
The theme for the 2016 Uppsala Health Summit is “Ending Childhood Obesity”
- Around 42 million children under 5 years are overweight or obese today. If trends persist, this figure will reach 70 million by 2025.
- In Africa, the number of children who are overweight or obese have doubled since 1990
- By 2025 the majority of obese or overweight children will live in low- and middle income countries.
- In high-income countries, overweight and obesity is generally plateauing. However, among children in socially disadvantaged groups the prevalence of obesity is still increasing.
- The prevalence of diabetes in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to increase by 100 % by 2035.