SIANI has enabled network opportunities that have led to several new research programmes. For example, ideas for projects between researchers in Sweden and Ethiopia were partly initiated at SIANI’s first workshop for young researchers in Lund, co-organized by SIANI, Lund University and the Afrint Research Group. The workshop, held in September 2014, addressed the possible links between agriculture, nutrition, and health nexus. Invited speakers included representatives from Sida and International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
Interdisciplinary networking
The aim of the workshop was to bring together young scientist from different disciplinary backgrounds to present, discuss and exchange experiences on research problems, ideas and perspectives relating to the agriculture, nutrition, and health nexus. It was also an opportunity for networking across disciplines by inviting researchers working with nutrition and health to meet with researchers working with agricultural production and veterinary sciences.
The formation of new research links and multiple research projects
Researchers at the workshop from Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala University and Lund University, later established a research consortium with Addis Continental Institute of Public Health, and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. They successfully applied for a Formas funding for the five-year interdisciplinary research project EAT ADDIS. The project gives a broad overview of the food and nutrition security, the nutrition transition and changing dietary habits in Addis Ababa and their social disparities.
EAT ADDIS later became the foundation for the EAT Choice project, linking topics concerning inequitable distribution of food security, healthy diets and sustainable food systems. It is financed by the Swedish Research Council (VR) 2023-2026 and run by Lund University, Uppsala University, Addis Ababa University and Addis Continental Institute of Public Health. Magnus Jirström, Professor in Human Geography at Lund University, writes to SIANI (translated to English):
“The EAT Choice project is going really well and we will spend a week in Addis Abeba analysing newly collected data […]. It concerns a “scale survey” where we have the ambition to develop a new validated instrument for mothers’ food choices for their children under five using the Likert scale. We have spent several months of qualitative interviews and analysis of these to create questions and scales for “food choice” in a non-Western context. New, demanding and great fun to learn new methods. It will be exciting if we get the method published and noticed. We are really having fun together with the group in Addis Abeba. All this started with a small workshop in Lund that SIANI helped us put together.”