Allies in war on malnutrition

AHMEDABAD: She is truly a Global Gujarati: her father was born in Kenya, mother in India, her husband is from Germany, and she lives in the US!

Rajul Pandya-Lorch

, the chief of staff at the DG office of the

International Food Policy Research Institute

(IFPRI), was the moderator at the

African Development Bank

(AfDB) Annual Meetings’ session titled ‘Developing Africa’s Grey Matter Infrastructure: Addressing Africa’s Nutrition Challenges’, at the

Mahatma Mandir

on Monday. She also heads IFPRI’s 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture and the Environment Initiative, seeking solutions for meeting world food needs while reducing poverty and protecting the environment.

“My family has been living on the east coast of Africa for over a century. We were brought up in the true Gujarati style,” she said. “But there is Africa in me. My Gujarati has a good chunk of Swahili and thus I have some difficulty in understanding the local language. But I am going to enjoy the Gujarati platter!”

Pandya-Lorch has won numerous awards for her work in the field of food security and nutrition. Comparing India with African nations, Pandya said that Africa can learn from Indian entrepreneurs. “Indians opened the countryside with their small shops and made a name for themselves,” she said. “Africa has a similar sense of family and community. Kenya values education. For a long time, if a community built school infrastructure, the government used to pay for teachers. Africa is also making rapid strides in countering problems such as malnutrition.”