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Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen (JLU) was founded in 1607. With around 28000 students, 5700 staff (including 400 professors) and 11 faculties, the university is prepared to meet any future challenges. The university is in Giessen, the city with the highest student density in Germany. The university has established strategic partnerships in seven regions, namely Australia, Europe (with a focus on Eastern Europe), Columbia, Southern Africa, Wisconsin (USA), China and South Asia. JLU has been successful in the framework of the national and federal programmes for the promotion of good teaching practice and for the promotion of young academics and equal treatment. At JLU, two departments, Agronomy and Plant Breeding I and Agricultural Policy and Market Research, are directly involved in HealthyDiets4Africa.

For more information, visit: JLU

In the project, JLU is involved in the following tasks:

• Coordination and management of the project
• Generation of nutrient database for major food crops
• Complementing existing food composition data with additional nutrient analysis
• Network mapping and sustainability analysis of food value chains/ food environments
• Evaluating consumer acceptance and adoption of diversified sustainable food products that support human health.

The Africa Rice Center (AfricaRice) is a CGIAR Research Center – part of a global research partnership for a food-secure future. It is also an intergovernmental association of African member countries.  AfricaRice was founded in 1971 with locations in Cote d‘Iviore (Abidjan Headquarters & Bouake), Senegal (Saint Louis), Nigeria (Ibadan, Abuja), Uganda (Kampala), Liberia (Suakoko), and Madagascar (Antananarivo) with about 200 staff including 33 internationally recruited staff. The mission of AfricaRice is to contribute to poverty alleviation and food security in Africa, through research, development and partnership activities aimed at increasing the productivity and profitability of the rice-based food systems in ways that ensure the sustainability of the farming environment in ways that ensure the sustainability of the farming environment.

For more information visit: AfricaRice

In the project, AfricaRice is involved in the following tasks:

• Identify underutilized species and support in nutrient analysis
• Test rice-fish, rice-vegetable, and rice-legume systems to enhance the productivity of smallholder farming systems.
• Analyze effect of processing methods and nutritional quality
• Examine consumer attitudes towards novel healthy foods through choice experiments
• Validate gender-inclusive business models to support the production and marketing of healthy diets
• Identify ready to scale innovations and evaluate their readiness to scale
• Setup diversified healthy diet scaling infrastructure.

KU Leuven was founded in 1425 and is currently a complete university with 16 faculties. The KU Leuven is recognized as the most innovative European university for several years. The university currently has 64,212 students (2021-2022), of whom 19.6% international students and 11,385 FTE employees (2020). The units involved in this project are Nutrition & Metabolism Associated Diseases unit and Leuven Centre for Affordable Health Technology.

For more information, visit: KUL

KU Leuven is involved in WP1, 2, 5 and 7. We assist in the dietary intake measurements, we hope to be able to tackle the health/beauty paradox and we will evaluate the effect of indigenous foods on several health outcomes. Finally, we would like to use an alternative method to measure food intake by using a smartplate.

Ghent University is an internationally renowned, open, pluralistic and socially engaged university in Belgium, founded in 1817. Ghent University has 11 faculties. Currently, it hosts 50000 students and has 15000 employees. It holds a portfolio of over 1,100 patents and 76 spin-offs. In Belgium, Ghent University is in Ghent, Courtrai, Bruges and Ostend. Ghent University Global Campus is the first European university in Songdo, South Korea. The University has institutional partnerships with Macquarie University and the University of Queensland (Australia), the University of Toronto (Canada), as well as Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley (USA). Ghent University also has several regional platforms.

At Ghent University, the Laboratory of Functional Plant Biology (Department of Biology), is involved in HealthyDiets4Africa.

For more information, visit: UGent

In the project, Ghent University is involved in the following tasks:

– Complement food composition data: vitamin analyses

– Novel food items: vitamin analyses

– Develop nutrient-enhanced rice by metabolic engineering

A first contribution involves analyzing the nutritional composition of underutilized local crops to determine their dietary value. The resulting insights hold great potential for promoting the consumption of such crops, thereby diversifying the local alimentation, and addressing the shortage of essential micronutrients of the current diet. An additional contribution entails the development of multi-biofortified rice lines. More specifically, we are dedicated to enhancing the levels of vitamin A, folate, and iron in rice.

The Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology (MPI-MP) was founded in 1994 and employs about 360 people from all over the world, who put their combined efforts into elucidating the secrets of plants. The overall goal is to understand how growth and metabolism are regulated, to learn how they respond to environmental factors, and to unravel genetic factors that underlie these processes and responses. To achieve this, it is not only necessary to understand the functions of individual genes, but also the molecular details of individual processes like the uptake of nutrients, the structure, storage, transport and mobilization of plant components, and the regulation of individual processes. It is essential to learn how these different processes interact in networks and to develop approaches that provide quantitative information and a predictive understanding of these complex networks.

For more information, visit: MPI-MP

In the HealthyDiets4Africa project, the MPI-MP is involved in the following tasks:

• Assessing metabolic composition in rice as well as unutilized crops
• Bio-fortification of vitamins in rice
• De-novo domestication of Oryza barthii

The Agricultural Farm of Zaragoza, which was created in 1881, is the origin of the Agri-Food Research and Technology Centre of Aragon.  CITA was created in 2002 as a public agri-food and environmental research body attached to the Government of Aragon. It is part of the INIA_CCAA system. The national network of agricultural and food research and technology centres, together with centres in 16 other autonomous communities. CITA conducts research in four main strategic areas: Sustainability of Agricultural and Forestry Systems, Global Change, Global Health, and Agri-Food Systems of the Future. CITA has a staff of 249 people, 54% of whom are women and 46% men. Approximately 60 people are staff researchers. CITA has 2 large Germplasm Banks of Fruit and Horticultural species. At CITA, the Agro-food economic Unit is directly involved in HealthyDiets4Africa.

For more information visit: CITA

In the project, CITA is involved in the following task:

– Evaluating consumer acceptance and adoption of diversified sustainable food products that support human health (WP leader)

The Regional Centre of Excellence against Hunger and Malnutrition (CERFAM) is a regional hub for exchanges, partnership building and South-South Cooperation. The result of a partnership between the Government of Côte d’Ivoire and the World Food Programme (WFP), CERFAM supports African countries in their national efforts to develop and implement sustainable policies and programmes to achieve Zero Hunger (SDG2) and combat all forms of malnutrition in line with the 2030 Agenda. Launched in March 2019, CERFAM responds to national Governments and regional institutions’ growing demands for capacity strengthening, technical expertise, knowledge management and South-South cooperation, especially in the areas of home-grown school feeding, post- harvest losses, nutrition interventions, community resilience and agricultural development. To this end, CERFAM identifies, documents, promotes, and disseminates good practices, while mobilizing high-level expertise for the implementation of these good practices through capacity building and South-South cooperation.

In the HealthyDiets4Africa consortium, CERFAM leads the implementation of Work package (WP) 9, focusing on the “Policies and communication” component of the project. CERFAM’s activities include mapping, improving, and monitoring changes in policy and engagement promoting healthy diets.

Africa Projects Development Centre (APDC Group) incubates and trains youth and women in various aspects of the agribusiness and exploits value chain addition as a panacea to the problem of unemployment in Nigeria. The Centre is a youth-led hub where several enterprises “proof of concepts” and validation have been undertaken to extend the agricultural value chain and improve farming with technological innovations, especially in urban agriculture. Some of the enterprises are poultry, aquaculture, heliculture (snailery), mushroom and horticulture (hydroponics/sac farming system of agricultural management). In addition, APDC has established the Fashionistas Enterprise to further empower youths and create employment, especially for women. APDC also offers specialized training on project development & management, results-based monitoring & evaluation, strategic thinking, public procurement, public financial management services, etc. for building the capacity of development professionals. APDC has eight international directors and 48 highly experienced staff, of which 44 are in Nigeria, 2 in DRC, 1 in Mali and 1 in Cameroon.

For more information, visit: APDC

APDC is involved in the following tasks:

• Diversified healthy food innovations including those identified in the other WPs and their readiness to scale determined.
• Established diversified technology delivery infrastructures (living labs)
• Develop Multistakeholder Innovation Platforms (MSIPs) and Integrated Youths in Agribusiness hubs (YABHs) for the production and commercialization of diversified healthy foods created or maintained.
• Linkages to support extension and market services for youth and women for sustainable healthy food production, processing, and commercialization.
• Linkage to financing and start-up kits options for sustainable healthy food production, processing and commercialization demonstrated.

International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) (a member of the CGIAR) is an award-winning, research-for-development (R4D) organization, providing solutions to hunger, poverty, and the degradation of natural resources in Africa. Some awards that IITA has received include the Africa Food Prize (2018) and the World Bio Protection Award (2022) for Innovative Research on aflatoxin management, among several others. Since 1967, IITA has worked with international and national partners to improve livelihoods, enhance food and nutrition security, increase employment, and preserve natural resource integrity. These improvements are made via its R4D and partnerships-for-development (P4D) directorates, including leading the scaling of technologies via the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) program working with different partners from across the sub-Saharan Africa. The institute has five hubs in Africa (Central, Eastern, Sahel, Southern and Western Africa hubs), 21 stations and is present in 30 countries.

Our Tasks in HealthyDiets4Africa are as follows:

• Leading work package on diversifying agricultural production and food processing to contribute to combating malnutrition via diversification
• Contributing develop metrics and indicators, which best describe the project’s objective and subjective, i.e., perceived food environment, and which effectively describe food environment risk factors for malnutrition
• Conducting research and addressing food safety risks associated with toxicants including pesticide residues, heavy metals, and mycotoxins).
• Contributing to integrated cropping systems such as the use of black soldier fly (BSF) larvae as more affordable animal protein, and BSF frass as organic fertiliser
• Scaling of technologies for advancing healthy diets in Africa for improved food security through diversified delivery
• Policy advocacy & communication to support positive action and awareness on healthy diets
• Contributing to successful and effective project that reaches its aims.

Food Security for Peace and Nutrition Africa (FSPN-Africa) is a Non-Governmental Organization established and registered in accordance to section 10 of the Non-Governmental Organizations Co-ordination Act in Kenya. FSPN-Africa (as commonly referred) was founded in October 2015 and granted official registration on 30th of January 2019 and has since rolled out to transforming lives through climate smart and nutrition sensitive Agriculture. Through our research, needs assessment and experience overtime, FSPN-Africa exclusively works with youth and women at the grassroots level towards sustainable food and nutrition security through our guided approaches including research and development, community education and sensitization, technology and innovation   and policy advocacy.  Our mission is to deliver sustainable food and nutrition security for peaceful coexistence across Africa by promoting partnerships with other stakeholders to support youth and women in Agriculture. We are currently driving and supporting food and nutrition solutions in Kenya and Tanzania.

For more information, visit: FSPN

In the HealthyDiets4Africa project, FSPN-Africa is involved in the following tasks:

– Community capacity building on Food Safety.

– Establishing Multistakeholder Innovation Platform and Youth Agri-business Hub in Kenya for healthy diets production and commercialization in Kenya.

– Facilitate linkages to support, extension and market services for youth and women for healthy diets production and commercialization.

The University of Dschang (UDS) is a public scientific and cultural institution founded in 1993. Its missions are teaching, research and support of development. UDS has a crucial role in rural development training in central Africa region but also in its research collaborations. Neighbouring countries such as Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon bring their students to Dschang. It is increasingly involved in regional training and collaborative research with international agencies such as IITA, ILRI, and ICIPE. Dschang’s bilingual capacity is a major asset. This university possesses around 14,000 students which study in several fields. The staff consists of 500 lecturers, 550 support staffs distributed in 40 departments and 7 faculties and schools. Among those faculties, the Faculty of Agronomy and Agricultural Sciences is involved in the HealthyDiets4Africa Project.

For more information, visit: UDS

In the HealthyDiets4Africa project, the UDS is involved in the following tasks:

• The development of a cropping system for selected local underutilize crops, valorisation of Agri waste as biofertilizer, development of feed formula using Agri waste for small scale farmer to enhance healthy food production.
• The development of innovation in relation to healthy diet production and consumption with emphasis on development of sustainable business model.

Entreprise en Santé et Sécurité au Travail (ESST) was founded in 2019 with 11 people including five consultants. We are a private organization located in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Our principal mission is to support companies in the best practices in safety, health, and wellness at work. Through counselling, training, various fun activities in the field of nutrition, stress management, sleep, promotion of healthy and diversified diet in the workplace, we help to promote workers’ health. Our interventions in the professional environment help to stimulate competitiveness and improve the overall performance of companies.

For more information visit: ESST

In the project, ESST is involved in:

• Promotion of healthy food innovations and diversified in workplace
• Collection and sharing of good practices identified
• Sharing guides and materials developed for a healthy and diversified diets.

Universität Heidelberg (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität) was founded in 1386 and is the oldest university in today’s Germany. Universität Heidelberg is home to 29,000 students, 8700 staff members and 535 professors and 13 faculties. With more than 27% international students, Heidelberg university is one of the most diverse universities in Germany. The university has established exchange programmes with more than 460 universities worldwide, Heidelberg’s marked global interconnectedness is also evidenced by its 27 university partnerships and an international research training group as well as its membership in European networks such as the League of European Research Universities (LERU), the Coimbra Group and the European University Alliance 4EU+. At Heidelberg Universität, Heidelberg Institute for Global Health (HIGH) is part of the Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg (UKHD). The research group “Climate Change, Nutrition and Health” at HIGH leads the Work Package “Mapping and Monitoring Diversity of Diets across Sub-Saharan Africa” in the HealthyDiets4Africa project.

In the project, UKHD has the main goal to characterize the diversity of diets across sub-Saharan Africa for different age groups, genders, locations, and socio-economic levels, and determine the changes of the identified dietary patterns across the project’s study locations. To achieve our specific objectives, we execute the following tasks:

• Data cleaning, plausibility checks and multiple imputations of dietary data from half a million people in 24 sub-Saharan African countries;
• Select dietary diversity measures to track changes upon dietary interventions in selected sub-Saharan Africa;
• Assess the usual diet of the project’s study populations (baseline) and calculate the distribution of the diversity indices; and
• Assess the dietary intakes of the project’s study populations (endline) and calculate the intervention effects on diversity indices

AVTC is a professional vocational training center founded in 2015. Its missions are to reduce unemployment among youth through the creation of new jobs opportunities and to improve on the well-being of communities and the valorization of local plants. To achieve its missions, AVTC focuses on three main activities: professional training, business, and research. Pursuant to professional training and business, young people are trained in agricultural entrepreneurship with the use of local materials at low cost, while targeting sectors with high potential market access. The center serves as a host institute for interns from universities and other agricultural training institutions while easing research for MSc and PhD students, researchers, and university lecturers. AVTC collaborates with grassroot organizations and international organizations such as IITA and GIZ. The Center has seven operational production units: off farm gardening, an aeroponic green-house, processing, poultry, fishponds, black soldier flies, pig farming.

In the HealthyDiets4Africa project, AVTC is involved in the following tasks:

• Diversification of cropping system and improvement of food processing and storage
• Identification of ready-to-scale healthy diet innovations and know-how
• Developing and adapting innovations in relation to healthy diet production and consumption, development of sustainable business model.

Bioversity International was established in Italy in 1974 as the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IBGRI), became in 1991 the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) and finally Bioversity International in 2006, reflecting an expanded vision of its role in agricultural and forest biodiversity and research for development activities. In 2019, Bioversity International joined forces with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT delivers research-based solutions that harness agricultural biodiversity and sustainably transform food systems to improve people’s lives across Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa. In collaboration with partners, the Alliance generates evidence and mainstreams innovations in large-scale programs to create food systems and landscapes that sustain the planet, drive prosperity, and nourish people in a climate crisis. The Alliance is part of CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future.

In the HealthyDiets4Africa project, the Alliance Bioversity International and CIAT is involved in

– Identifying determinants of dietary diversity within the food environment

– Mapping and monitoring diversity of diets

– Identification of underutilized crops that can contribute to alleviate malnutrition

Opportunities Industrialization Center Côte d’Ivoire (OIC-CI) is a non-governmental organization (NGO) founded in 1986 by decree N°1363 on 29th October 1986. Affiliated with OIC International based in Washington (USA), its mission is to promote self-employment to contribute to combating unemployment, rural exodus, and poverty. OIC Côte d’Ivoire is a training and monitoring institution that has a good reputation from private, public, and para-public partners. It has been active since 1988 in various domains such as integration, reintegration and the monitoring-supervision, post-installation of the beneficiaries in areas such as agriculture and animal breeding, micro enterprises management, cooperative management and community life, feasibility study, initiation to computer science and improvement, reproductive health and nutrition, renewable energy (solar energy and bio-digester), functional literacy and community infrastructures construction and restoration.

In the project, OIC-CI is involved in WP8 with the following tasks:

• Setting up training facilities for youth in diversified health food production
• Recruitment of youths and training in health food production and marketing (Training services)
• Placement of youths in companies producing healthy foods (Placement services)
• Provision of startups to youths involved in the production and marketing of healthy foods (Entrepreneurial services).

The University of Copenhagen (UCPH) was founded in 1479 and today has 37,000 students and 10,000 employees – of whom more than 5,000 are researchers. Ten Nobel Prizes have been awarded to researchers at the University.

The Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports has expertise in performing human studies in all age groups with a strong track record of studies in infants and children. The research group in Pediatric and International Nutrition has special expertise in performing studies in low-income settings and is involved in the HealthyDiets4Africa project.

For more information, visit: UCPH

We will mainly contribute to:

• Identifying health effects of indigenous and novel foods (WP 7.1)
• Assessing effects of food interventions/diversified diets on growth and body composition in stunted children (WP 7.3)
• Assessing adoption of food recipes on more diverse complementary foods and effects of these complementary foods on dietary diversity, nutrient adequacy and nutritional status of 6-23 month-old children (WP 5.2).

Kenyatta University (KU) is one of the leading universities in Kenya founded in 1985. It is located approximately 17.5 kilometers from Nairobi city. It is home to some of the world’s top scholars, researchers, and experts in diverse fields. Its mission is to provide quality education and training, through knowledge generation, research, innovation, creativity, and community service. This mission is pursued by a growing body of scholars recognized nationally and internationally for their contributions to humanities, social, physical, environmental sciences, business, law, medicine, public health, engineering, education, and creative arts. The university is committed to working closely with national and international organizations that support research and innovation activities. The University collaborates with researchers in and out of the country, local community, industry, government, and policy makers. The department of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics where the project is anchored is actively involved in research in areas of food security and food safety, community nutrition, clinical nutrition among others.

For more information visit: KU

In the HealthyDiets4Africa, we are involved in the following tasks:

• Collaborate with local communities in Kenya to co-create nutrient-dense recipes, promote their consumption, and monitor the adoption and contribute to meeting dietary diversity and nutrient requirements among children aged 6-23 months. We will conduct acceptance experiments for recipes developed.
• Conduct exposure assessment of different toxicants in the food chains including heavy metals (arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, and chromium), toxins formed during processing (acrylamides) and mycotoxins formed during production to storage and assess the risk of developing cancer among other NCDs.
• Analyze socio-cultural factors, agricultural practices, food preparation and processing techniques, food habits, sourcing foods and consumer attributes associated with potential exposure to the toxicants.

De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) is a dynamic institution with a long and vibrant history of improving people’s lives through education and research.  Originally founded as the Leicester School of Art in 1870, the university has evolved through many incarnations including the Leicester Colleges of Art and Technology and Leicester Polytechnic.  Leicester Polytechnic officially became De Montfort University on 26 June 1992.  At DMU, we have an ambitious Research Strategy which aims to make research central to our mission as a university.  As a university committed to the public good, we have a track record of research that impacts society and makes a real difference to people’s lives through improvements to health and well-being, infrastructure, creativity, economic growth, business and civil society.  As the United Nations’ (UN) designated Global Hub for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 – the only UK university to be designated as such – we have a commitment to address the UN SDGs in our research, teaching, and enterprise activity.

For more information, visit: DMU

Our role in the project will involve highly interdisciplinary research carrying out food safety, diet, nutrition, and food behaviour studies.  Food safety, diet and nutrition research will involve analysis of diverse African food samples using an array of physical techniques including Mass Spectrometry and other spectroscopic and microscopic techniques.  We will also carry out human biomonitoring studies involving analysis of human biofluids including urine, blood, hair, and nail samples.  Our research has revealed how high consumption of rice can lead to increased exposure to toxic forms of arsenic.  We will carry out metal speciation analysis to discriminate between toxic and non-toxic forms of metal species such as organic and inorganic arsenic.  We will evaluate presence of toxic and beneficial substances in diverse African foods and conduct risk assessment.

Our other role on the project relates to psychological factors in relation to the acceptance of novel and under used indigenous foods. This will be carried out across three main activities: 1) Determinants of dietary diversity within the food environment, and emotional reactions to novel and underutilized food groups, 2) Co-design of recipes and cooking interventions to incorporate diversified diets, and 3) Impacts of interventions to encourage dietary diversification on health outcomes.

The Center of Plant Systems Biology and Biotechnology (CPSBB) is a leading Bulgarian institute performing fundamental and applied research in plant science areas such as molecular plant physiology, plant cell biotechnology, genetics and genomics, plant metabolomics, bioinformatics, and vegetable breeding. CPSBB is located in Plovdiv, an academic and economical center of Southern Bulgaria, one of the most ancient cities in Europe and the European Culture Capital for 2019. CPSBB cooperates with more than 130 organizations across the world, including universities, research institutes, and companies. Two CPSBB departments, Molecular Stress Physiology and Vegetable Breeding, participate in HealthyDiets4Africa.

For more information visit: CPSBB

In the HealthyDiets4Africa, CPSBB participates in Work Package 4. The expected outcomes of CPSBB’s activities are:

• New crops introduced to the consortium (eggplants, lettuce, pepper, raspberry, tomato).
• New cultivars of pepper and tomato with increased nutritional properties.
• New cultivars of vegetable crops with enhanced tolerance to drought.
• Molecular priming technology that enhances crop yield and mitigates stress.
• New technology to increase durability and extend shelf life of fruits and vegetables.