Championing the war against hunger
Correspondent | Friday September 18, 2015 16:39
Nearly 800 million people in the world are hungry. This translates to one in every nine people go without enough to eat.
As it is, hunger and malnutrition are the number one risks to health globally with each year seeing the death toll exceed those of AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.
But senior nutrition officer for policy and programmes in the nutrition division at the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), Boitshepo Giyose would like to see a change.
She says nutrition has never been the preserve of one sector and the war against hunger cannot be won from a single front.
“It is multi-sectoral, inter-and multi-disciplinary with elements of agriculture because it is where food is produced,” she says, adding that she takes a holistic approach to tackling issues of nutrition.
Her main focus is on integrating nutrition at policy and programme level into agriculture and other development agendas such as education, and mother and child issues.
“I work closely with the agricultural sector to instil the need to be nutrition-sensitive,” she says, adding that it is not just about the quantities produced, but also ensuring that the production is adequate and balanced.
By and large, she observed in her career over the years that produce was only thought of in the context of staple foods, which led to biased national food baskets that were not nutritionally adequate.
With emphasis placed on the staples, which Giyose says tend to mainly be starch, other foods of nutritional value go unchecked, therefore affecting the scales of adequacy and balance when it comes to production.
For instance, foods such as fruits and vegetables, which provide vitamins and minerals are lacking in the efforts for food security.
By winning the fight in food security, the battle is still being lost with global figures indicating that nearly three million children die from hunger-related causes every year and that 60 percent of the chronically hungry are women.
These outcomes are no surprise if nations strive towards inadequate and unbalanced food securities, and Giyose says this can be prevented.
“Nutrition is about both the physical and the mental. If one is physically and mentally stunted they cannot be productive,” she says, adding that she has to deliver a level of conscientiousness and application to the highest offices of the land.
Her time at the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) was spent focusing on Africa and allowed her to be the liaison between the continent and other international organisations in the different regions of the world.
“Having worked for the Commonwealth from a health perspective and worked for NEPAD from a nutrition and agriculture perspective, I was ready for the bigger challenge,” she says.
Moving to FAO has instilled in her a global focus, which has given her more of a vantage point in the fight to end hunger.
“My role is to bring together the policy and programme aspects for a better nutritional outcome on a global scale. I now cover all the regions of the world,” she says.
On the local front, Giyose, a former columnist for Mmegi’s sister publication, The Monitor says she enjoyed the challenge of writing, as nutrition was an area that was ignored.
With her experience in nutrition, she set out to share knowledge, impart advice and raise awareness and consciousness of what people should be doing about their health. However, the column was a limited platform targeting specific health issues, adds Giyose.
“There wasn’t much broadness around policies and programmes. You know, the kind of things that government should be doing,” she says.
It has been two years since Giyose last penned her nutrition column for The Monitor and already she perceives a dearth in the application of health knowledge.
She notices that lifestyle diseases such as diabetes have ballooned, not for want of knowledge but rather the lack of will to make better health choices.
Her column not only reached out to the public. It also challenged government on what it should be doing about its own systems around how to support the health, nutrition and agriculture of individuals and communities.
Though she acknowledges the good that government has done in some aspects of nutrition, she feels nourishment and food production should be treated from a preventative approach.
She observes that government has rather taken the curative approach by having nutrition slotted as a department under one ministry.
She is of the opinion that a linear ministry such as health should not be the only one tackling nutrition.
In her view, if Botswana were to do well in this war, it would have to create similar departments within linked ministries.
In addition to health, she mentions that other ministries such as agriculture, finance, trade and transport should work closely.
Not only does she cite government on the matter, but also the private sector, and non-governmental organisations.
She says: “Communities should be involved with and about food and agricultural production leading to better nutrition, health and longevity”.
Nutrition as a complex issue faces the crises of the four Fs: food, fuel, fertiliser and finance, which have not only frustrated Botswana but the world.
However, in Botswana the problem is exacerbated by drought and water restrictions, which have hit directly at households who have been encouraged to consider cottage and backyard farming.
Food in general has become expensive, with Botswana importing a majority of the items sold in supermarkets.
Giyose attributes part of the problem to the country not having its own food composition table, which could aid in crop production for food security.
“We have been shooting in the dark for too long. It is time Botswana designed its own food composition table and analyse what Batswana are eating or should be eating,” she says.
“Government needs to identify key people to evaluate such a chart with a nutritional consideration. “I can go to any country in the world and work out their diet as a nation,” Giyose says, adding that the same should also be said for Botswana.
Doing such research, Giyose says, beckons farmers to be included in the process, as production should look at diet composition where commodities can be grown from an informed application.
She posits that government not only needs to know what Batswana diet on, could potentially eat and what they should be consuming, but also has to do its own consumption pattern to support potential farming opportunities.
“You cannot design a diet with commodities that are not available, accessible and affordable. That would be a starting point for government to understand what Batswana are eating,” she says.
She adds: “The more government knows the patterns, the better chances of knowing what needs to be traded, exported, grown and supplied”.
Giyose’s voyage in nutrition started in Serowe where she was born.
She observed her grandmother at their home village, Kgagodi where she spent her formative years. She says she owes her passion for nutrition, to her grandmother who raised her and of whom she speaks glowingly.
The matriarch was a great influence in many aspects including her passion for food and family. “She was an avid health cook and I knew then I love food. I knew that I wanted to pursue food, but as a child I did not know what that meant,” she recalls.
From basic health education in primary, to Home Economics at secondary school, she knew then that she wanted to stick with food and complement it with medicine.
As she excelled through her studies, she stayed the course even at a time government did not offer nutrition as a discipline. In fact, she insisted on pursuing nutrition, which she finally studied in the United States.
As much as she is passionate about everything food, she is just as zealous about life.
In her downtime she likes to check in on family and friends dotted around the world. She confesses she is a fitness enthusiast and an Aerobics and Hatha Yoga practitioner to boot, which she instructs part time.
In addition, she enjoys African and Caribbean dance as an occasional performing artist and teacher. In fact, she founded dance troupes in Ithaca, New York, Tanzania, and in Botswana. In 2002, she climbed and reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, which stands at 5,895 metres.
She is fluent in English and conversant in French. Apart from Setswana being mother tongue, Giyose speaks Sotho, Pedi, Zulu, Xhosa and Kiswahili. She is currently adding Portuguese and Spanish to that bill as, for her, learning languages is something of a treasure.