Ethiopian govt with WFP launches global convening to meet Zero Hunger by 2030

The Ethiopian government has launched a global convening in association with the United Nations World Food Programme to provide 'Transformative Food Assistance for Zero Hunger.'

The National Disaster Risk Management Commission (NDRMC) of the government of Ethiopia unveiled the global convening as the realization of a requirement for a new way to look at was felt. Subsequently, the requirement of addressing the problems in the world's food systems to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 2 of Zero Hunger by 2030.

The fact that 125 million are acutely hungry, meaning they lack access to enough food to live healthy lives, suggests food systems do not work in ways to meet the needs of the many. More than 200 participants are in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa for the two-and-a-half-day meeting. They are national policy makers responsible for food and nutrition security, food assistance practitioners from humanitarian and developmental organizations, donors and philanthropic bodies and food security academics.

The event is intended to concentrate on the augmenting awareness of the scope and depth of food assistance, and on developing consensuses on priorities for policy reform, institutional innovation and investment toward transformative food assistance in different contexts. Critically, the group hopes to achieve a consensus on an action plan toward the creation of a Global Centre for Transformative Food Assistance in 2020 to be based in Ethiopia.

"We are seizing an opportunity by convening here in Addis Ababa, and by proposing that the Global Centre is established in Ethiopia. The country has a solid knowledge and track record of delivering food assistance at scale. The design and implementation of food assistance strategies are embedded within its institutions. That scale is indicative of how Ethiopia is already leveraging and influencing food systems,"WFP Representative and Country Director in Ethiopia Steven Were Omamo said.