Urban nutrition workshop comes to Southern Africa
Noel W Solomons
Chair: IUNS Committee II/3
Rainer Gross
Vice Chair: IUNS Committee II/3

S A J Clin Nutr 2000 February Vol 13 No 1

Supplement
Since the end of World War II a number of scientific fashions have come and gone in public health, while major demographic changes have occurred in the low-income nations of the world. With the founding of the United Nations and its diverse agencies, there was a ‘discovery’ (or re-discovery) of the problem of malnutrition (undernutrition) in the countries of the tropics, countries which were then emerging from European colonialism. In 1950 most of the world’s population was rural, and it was the agrarian peasants, nomadic pastoral groups and hunter-gatherer tribes that captivated the interest of public health nutrition. The standard for nutrition research and intervention in poor populations became the rural setting. The demographic patterns of migration and natural increases in population over the last half century have produced a dramatic change. Seven of the world’s 10 largest metropolises are in developing countries and the majority of the poor in both Latin America and Asia live in urban centres.1,2 With the urbanisation of the poor in low-income nations, a more balanced nutritional concern, departing from the risk of nutrient deficiencies but embracing the problems of nutritional excess and chronic non-communicable diseases, was formed.3.4

For over a decade the International Union of Nutritional Sciences (IUNS) has been the leader in terms of raising consciousness of urban nutrition and knowledge of this thematic area. In 1985 the first workshop on urban nutrition was held at an International Congress of Nutrition (ICN);5 since that date this topic has been a consistent part of the programme of the ICN, reaching Symposium status in Montreal in 1997. In 1985 the IUNS created the Committee on Urbanisation and Nutrition under the pioneering leadership of Dr Soekirman of Indonesia. After the 1989 ICN in Seoul, Korea, there was a succession of leadership of Committee II/3, and one of us (RG) assumed the chair. A format for interactive workshops was designed, and a mission came to be the Committee’s sponsoring of urban nutrition workshops in the three continents of the developing world. An Asian workshop was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,6 a Latin American workshop in Mexico City,7 and an African workshop for francophone nations in Cotonou, Benin.8

At the 1993 ICN in Adelaide, Australia, the experience of three regional workshops was translated into the design for an Urban Nutrition Action Workshop (UNAW); this was presented in a small pre-Congress workshop. The secret of these workshop exercises was to combine accumulated knowledge of urban nutrition with a participatory compilation of personal experience among the participants themselves. For the participants, an introduction to the interactive meta-plan techniques of ZOPP(Ziel-Orientierte Projekt Planu or Goal-Oriented Project Planning) and SHARP (Structured, Holistic Approach to Research Planning) was implemeted. Knowing these techniques and how to facilitate them is critical factor in the proliferation of the UNAWs in cities in transition across the globe.

The workshop held in Durban, South Africa, represesents the culmination of one process (the regional urban workshops) and the inauguration of another (the era of the UNAWs). With the representation of nations from southern and western Africa, the anglophone regions of the continent have now been introduced to the process of the urban workshop. However, the immediacy of the issues explored in Durban reflected the daily, heartfelt concerns of nutritionists in the field, together with the flavour of the more intimate action workshops. These proceedings lend themselves to the list of IUNS documents that serve as a resource for the nutrition community as it continues the discovery of the dysnutritional characteristics of populations living in towns, cities and metropolises throughout Africa and around the tropical world. It has been an honour and a pleasure to have been invited to participate in this event in South Africa, and we deeply appreciate the herculean efforts of the local Organising Committee and the local sponsoring societies and industries for bringing the workshop to fruition.

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Last updated: 17-Feb-2004