Climate-smart African cereal, pulse and root crops

The project will address key bottlenecks of African food value chains – low productivity, limited access to urban and international markets, affordability and convenience of products. It will tailor actions to develop novel solutions for agriculture, food manufacturing and use of residual biomass for packaging in a local context.

Nofima’s role

Research scientists at Nofima in Ås and Stavanger will be involved in the following research fields:

• Consumer behaviour
• Sensory science
• Raw materials
• Process optimisation

Objectives

• InnoFoodAFrica supports development of resource-efficient, safe and sustainable agro-food value chains by empowering smallholder farmers, producers and consumers via co-creation process with African and European experts.
• InnoFoodAfrica focuses on country-specific adaptation and implementation of plant-based diets tackling malnutrition of small children breast-feeding mothers and adults under the risk of obesity.
• InnoFoodAfrica focuses on increasing resource-efficiency of the African agro-food value chains by reducing loss and waste by improved post-harvesting and storage practices, and by creating value from side streams via bio-based packaging solutions for replacement of plastic.
• InnoFoodAfrica supports establishment of a pan-African food R&D&I  community via cooperation and creation of an open Innovation Platform to share innovations, maximize communication and facilitate technology transfer.