WFSC in Côte d’Ivoire: Learning about yams and chocolate

World Food System Summer School in Côte d’Ivoire:

Food Systems in Transition

27 January - 10 February 2018

The question of how to feed the world, while considering human health, the environment, and social wellbeing, is one of the defining challenges of our time. In order to understand the world food system and find ways to deal with its complexity, graduate students and young professionals from around the world will meet in Côte d’Ivoire to take part in a two-week intensive Summer School course organized by the World Food System Center at the ETH Zurich, in collaboration with the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques en Côte d’Ivoire (CSRS).

The two-week intensive academic course entitled, “Food Systems in Transition,” aims to understand challenges and solutions to complex food system challenges, like the triple burden of malnutrition and how to ensure access to food in the face of change drivers like urbanization, changing consumption patterns, climate change, and biodiversity loss. Two value chains will be in focus during the course - yams, a local food security crop, and cocoa, an export cash crop. Participants will delve into the importance of yams through field visits to local formal and informal markets, and through a visit to a yam field site to meet with farmers and innovation platform members. The participants will also have a chance to explore the challenges and opportunities that cocoa plays in the area by interacting with a panel of experts from both industry and academia and visiting farmer cooperatives and local chocolate processing facilities.

The program offers potentially life-changing opportunities for the students who will participate. During these two weeks, 27 graduate students and young professionals from 15 different coun­tries and 18 disciplines will have a chance to discuss food and nutrition security solutions, share meals with peers, and learn from internationally known contributors and local stakeholders alike. By the end of the course, the group will have started to develop its own network of young professionals with whom they may continue to collaborate in the future.

Contributors

The course involves a diverse group of contributors from academia, industry, policy, development cooperation, and civil society organizations. Contributors include professors and scientists from the ETH Zurich, members of the World Food System Center, and representatives from the United Nations World Food Programme, the University of Abomey-Calavi, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, and the World Agroforestry Centre.

Organization

The World Food System Center at ETH Zurich works toward a vision of a healthy world through sustainable food systems. Our 41 professorial members from nine different departments engage in interdisciplinary research, education, and outreach together with partners from a variety of sectors. ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, is one of the leading international universities for technology and natural science. It has more than 18,000 students from over 110 countries and 500 professors.

The course is organized by the World Food System Center in partnership with the Swiss National Science Foundation Research for Development Project “Biophysical and socio-economic drivers of sustainable soil use in yam cropping systems for improved food security in West Africa” (external page Yamsys).

Funding

This World Food System summer school is being hosted in collaboration with the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques en Côte d'Ivoire (CSRS), a lead member institution in the Yamsys project. This course is subsidized through the kind support of the SNF R4D program and the Mercator Foundation Switzerland.

Further information

http://www.worldfoodsystem.ethz.ch/education/summer-schools.html

Follow the journey of these students on external page Facebook (@ethzWFSC) and external page #wfsceducation.

Contact

ETH Zurich World Food System Center

Michelle Grant, Education Director

P  +41 632 98 29

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Dr. Jeanne E. Tomaszewski, Communication Manager

P +41 632 28 78

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