First call CoP Markets, Supply Chains and Nutritious foods – May 18, 2020

The scope of this Food security and COVID-19 CoP is “food value chains from farm to fork, including nutritious foods and reaching the most vulnerable”. The CoP is convened by GAIN (Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition) and co-convened by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MinFA) and the Netherlands Food Partnership (NFP). Several Dutch organizations participate, including Wageningen University and Research (WUR), 2SCALE, SNV, Oxfam Novib and ICCO.

In the first CoP call on Monday May 18, 2020, three potential areas for collaboration were identified:

1. Implementation in the field:

• We may be able to do country action more effectively. The group is currently identifying the overlap between countries, sectors and topics they work in. Once this overview is made, a further investigation will be done on complementarity and possible joint strategizing. Ideally, we find a common interest in 3 or 4 countries.
• Several organizations work on emergency grants for SMEs. It would be valuable to work together to draft and agree upon common criteria for these emergency grants.

2. Policy/advocacy/governance:

• Practical policy guidance could be a joint activity. There is a sense that policymakers have to make quite big decisions on resource allocations, while struggling to decide how much weight to give to certain types of interventions.
• The Netherlands are known for being pragmatic, having a variety of strong organisations, working in partnerships, and focus on resilience and adaptation. We should make our work more visible; show with whom and through whom change should be fostered. This C19 crisis has even made it more visible how important our work is. Could we, with a variety of organisations, come up with a joint statement/ pragmatic suggestions to leaders and politicians?
• Jointly we can also look at a more systemic response; resilience needs to be built in these markets and supply chains for the longer-term.

3. Knowledge sharing:

• Look into smart intelligence to get more out of knowledge sharing.
• Work closely together with the Wageningen UR group on knowledge capturing and sharing.

Resources

Meanwhile several organizations have already shared their current work on COVID-19 programme impact and rapid assessment reports:

• Wageningen UR; seed sector assessments in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Myanmar and Uganda.
• GAIN; bi-weekly rapid assessment reports in the 10 countries they work in (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Nigeria).
• GAIN; report on Covid-19 impact on SMEs in food systems in 17 countries.
• 2SCALE; survey on impact of C-19 on 2SCALE business partners.
• 2SCALE blog on partner C-19 responses in Ethiopia, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.
• SNV; several blogs on their Covid-19 response activities.