Pic- Fungai Kuytauripo on the left with otherparticipants in Rwanda

The Smallholder Irrigation Revitalisation Programme’s nutritionist, Fungai Kutyauripo who scooped the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) prize earlier this year, outshining participants from 19 other IFAD projects from 11 African countries recently shared the country’s experiences at the AGRF Summit in Kigali, Rwanda. Kutyauripo’s award was in recognition of her efforts that promoted innovative approaches to nutrition education and social behaviour change communication.
In her presentation to the summit, Kutyauripo dwelt on key success factors in achieving better nutrition through agricultural investment. The presentation also focused on nutrition sensitive responses implemented by the country and the programme to ensure food and nutrition security during the COVID -19 shutdown in Zimbabwe and in light of the disruptions caused by the frequent and intense climate events that disrupted agriculture and undermined progress made in the fight against hunger and malnutrition.
The presentation highlighted the availability of functional market systems and human capacity for achieving nutrition outcomes. In Zimbabwe, during the COVID 19 lockdown agriculture was classified as an essential service with policies put in place to enable farmers to produce and transport produce to the markets. The sector also intensified resilient actions to improve food security and livelihoods while scaling up nutrition education using different media.