Food and Nutrition Directorate

Duties and Responsibilities

• Ensures, implements, and leads the establishment of a safe, nutrient-rich, diversified, and healthy production and utilization system for agricultural products in the region.
• Organizes the Regional Food Safety Advisory Committee and monitors and coordinates the implementation of the regional food and nutrition system strategy.
• Coordinates the identification of nutrient gaps at the regional level through Nutrient Gap Analysis and facilitates the identification of food-based technologies through research.
• Coordinates research centers to develop biofortified technologies that can address nutrient gaps, including iron- and zinc-enriched beans, Vitamin A-enriched sweet potatoes, and quality protein maize.
• Develops systems that improve the supply and utilization of food and nutrition technologies and recommendations, monitors their implementation, develops project proposals and mobilizes resources, carries out capacity-building activities, and establishes a coordinated working system.
• Coordinates and works to establish Food and Nutrition Demonstration Centers and Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture Model Villages.
• Prepares and leads annual plans based on the strategic plan of the office and the country's food and nutrition policy and strategy, and evaluates their implementation.
• Implements a working system that enables food and nutrition service delivery to be supported by modern Information and Communication Technology (ICT), and monitors its sustainability.
• Identifies and promotes effective practices in the food and nutrition sector and facilitates their transformation into permanent working systems.
• Identifies gaps, technologies, and practices through assessments to improve the supply, accessibility, and utilization of nutrient-rich food products, and provides solutions based on the findings of the studies.
• Facilitates the identification of behavior-change approaches that can improve the nutritional status of farmers and semi-pastoralists, and coordinates the development and dissemination of nutrition-sensitive agriculture messages using the identified approaches.
• Coordinates the identification, adaptation, and utilization of effective technologies for improving food and nutrition.
• Facilitates the development of implementation strategies for food quality and safety, small-scale value addition, post-harvest management, and the overall implementation of nutrition-sensitive agriculture, and monitors their implementation.
• Establishes a working system for implementing food safety and quality standards and guidelines within the agricultural sector, and monitors their implementation.
• Establishes a working system that ensures private-sector participation in making nutrient-rich food products accessible.
• Generates and promotes ideas for developing a strategy that enables producers involved in agricultural cluster production, based on local production capacity and resources, to adopt diversified production and dietary patterns, and monitors its implementation.
• Facilitates the establishment of value-addition and post-harvest management systems that enable seasonal agricultural products to be available throughout the year.
• Facilitates the preparation of Agroecology-Based Food Recipe Guidelines using products that are centered on the ecosystem and rich in nutritional content.
• Facilitates the establishment of a working system, in consultation with relevant stakeholders, to implement home-garden agriculture development as a strategic option for improving household dietary diversity.
• Establishes, together with relevant stakeholders, working systems and incentives that improve access to and utilization of technologies that play a significant role in saving women's labor and time and improving household nutrition.
• Develops projects and mobilizes resources to provide inputs that help strengthen the implementation capacity of institutions at different levels working in the field of food and nutrition.
• Coordinates the documentation and compilation of best practices from effective food and nutrition interventions.
• Monitors and ensures the existence of a safe, nutrient-rich, diversified, and healthy agricultural production system.