By Neo Kolane
On December 1, 2016 King Letsie III was appointed as FAO’s newest Special Ambassador for Nutrition by the Organization’s Director-General, José Graziano da Silva in Rome.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the announcement was made at a high-level International Symposium on Sustainable Food Systems for Healthy Diets and Improved Nutrition (December 1-2).
It was held to explore country-level challenges and successes in the nutritional reshaping of food production, processing, marketing and retail systems. Malnutrition, including obesity and micronutrient deficiencie, blights the lives of billions of individuals and can trap generations in a vicious cycle of poverty.
“To me it is a great honor to be appointed as FAO Special Ambassador for Nutrition because it is a subject matter which I feel has been neglected for many years but it is of great importance not only to us as individuals but to countries in the world as a whole.
“I am hoping that through my ambassadorship I can contribute to the promotion of better nutrition and food security through the world,” the King said.
Regarding the value of traditional knowledge regarding food and healthy diets, he said: “I think we need to go back to basics and do appropriate research on the traditional foods and promote them more and better within our countries. We need to expose and elevate the importance of traditional foods and their nutritional value so that we can grow locally and eat more of them for the benefit of our health and society in general.”
King Letsie III added that collaboration among various stakeholders on nutrition is critical to ending malnutrition in a country.
In October 2019, King Letsie III hosted a one-day high level event on food security and nutrition in Maseru.
The objectives of the consultation were to consult and dialogue with private sector and parliamentarians to define public private partnerships for food and nutrition security. This basically highlighted the role of parliamentarians in advancing nutrition intervention at national and regional level and how public-private partnership and parliament can support AU led continental initiatives.
The consultation concluded with strong recommendations that would contribute to strengthening private public partnerships and stronger engagement of the private sector and parliamentarians in advancing the food security and Nutrition agenda of the continent.
WFP estimates that, in 79 countries where it works, the number of acutely food insecure people could increase by 80 percent from 149 million during pre-COVID-19 period, to over a quarter of a billion by the end of 2020. Every low and middle income country faces this challenge.
On his side, King Letsie III was delighted to address the challenges to food and nutrition security in the COVID-19 era and beyond
He said that the complexity of poverty and hunger as social problems makes multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder coalitions a necessity. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it unprecedented socio-economic challenges that compel people to work together even closer than before.
“The impact of COVID-19 on economies and health systems globally has been drastic and all encompassing, while containment measures have saved lives.
They have also triggered economic recessions and severe impacts on communities and individuals.
“We are now faced with urban hunger and vulnerabilities which we have always known existed, but we were not well prepared to address.
He added that in some countries, the pandemic has added yet another layer of suffering and complexity to existing and long-standing crises, worsening the prevalence of hunger, poverty and malnutrition.
