Office of the Vice President for Research and Collaboration (VPRC) at Hawassa university, in collaboration with ICP V project supported by the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Ethiopia, organized a policy dialogue entitled, "Linking Evidence-based Nutrition Sensitive Agriculture research with policy and practice" where both national and regional stakeholders were in attendance.
In his opening remarks, Dr. Tafesse Matewos, VPRC, enlisted three major pillars of national development: having capable leaders, well educated citizens, and scientific research and innovations. He underscored the indispensable role of research and innovations and the need to allocate better amount of resources for research and innovations to ensure quality, relevance and implementation both at national and institutional levels. In this regard, Dr. Tafesse expressed appreciation to the ICP V project, a five years collaboration among Hawassa, Mekelle and Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), for enabling HU to work on research, community services and policy dialogues that are critically alighned with Ethiopia's national development strategies.
Dr. Beruk Berhanu presented a policy assessment on how much the research findings related to nutrition sensitive agriculture in Ethiopia have been incorporated into policies and practices across regions over the years and the outcomes observed, especially in areas of preventing child malnutrition and stunting. The presentation was very insightful and thought provoking as participants raised several points during discussion on the issue.
Representatives of the federal Ministry of Agriculture, institute of agricultural transformation, Sidama Regional state, agriculture bureau and senior scholars and researchers of HU were also in attendance.
There was a consensus on the fact that a lot is to be done by stakeholders to bring a coherence among research, policy and practices. Dr. Tafesse also concluded that Ethiopia should re-visit its research ecosystem, avoid wastage of resources in disintegrated units across regions and invest more on integrated systems.
