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The Food & Nutrition Security Excellence Programme challenges teams of Bachelor students to contribute to Food & Nutrition Security (FNS) by working on real-life cases of Dutch embassies in Africa. Students can now register: selected teams will work for a period of three months on consultancy assignments and pitch their final ideas for the embassies and Dutch FNS experts.  »

The Access to Seeds Index 2019 Synthesis Report has just been released. It describes the opportunities and progress shown by the seed industry, and highlights the importance of local and regional companies in providing access to seeds for smallholder farmers. Challenges differ in each of the three main regions covered by the index: South and Southeast Asia, in Eastern and Southern Africa, and Western and Central Africa. »

The Food & Business Applied Research Fund (ARF) addresses the knowledge and research needs of partners in the bilateral food security programmes of the 15 Dutch development cooperation partner countries and focuses on food security as a local challenge. From June 18 to 20, 2019 an ARF country workshop takes place in Uganda: all Uganda-based projects have now published factsheets with their midterm or final research results. »

What development interventions are effective in fragile settings and how can market-based agricultural and food security interventions better link up with humanitarian, rehabilitation and resilience programming? This was the central topic of the latest meeting of the Community of Practice on food security and stability on May 6, 2019. »

The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs has presented an online report providing an overview of the results achieved by the Netherlands in the field of development cooperation in 2018. Under the theme Food and Nutrition Security, the Netherlands made an important contribution to the elimination of malnutrition and the development of small-scale food farming. »

A new comprehensive database of funds providing capital for AgTech companies is available on the new website of NpM, Platform for Inclusive Finance. The tool is based on the study “Critical Capital for African Agri-Food SMEs” and the list is expanded to include all of Africa and some Asian countries. »