The 2017 edition of the Nutritious Food Fair (NFF), an annual event of the HarvestPlus Nigeria, will create 3,000 jobs in the nutritious food value chain.

The NFF with the theme, “Scaling up the Nutritious Food Choices: Engaging Everyone, Everywhere,” will take place between November 28 and 30, 2017, at the Michael Okpara Square in Enugu State. 

The food fair, which is targeting over 15,000 participants to exhibit nutritious food products, strengthen business skills and linkages, identify new partners, communicate brands for enhanced marketing and participate in a host of competitions targeted at promoting the consumption of nutritious foods by Nigerians.

Speaking at a press conference in Lagos, the Country Manager, HarvestPlus Nigeria, Dr. Paul Ilona, who said his organisation has identified the need to put the nutritious food sector on a platform that is business driven and sustainable, agreed that one way to do this was to come up with a food fair.

According to him, the NFF provided a platform that enabled everyone including the media to come and chart a new way of addressing micronutrients’ malnutrition in Nigeria.

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He added: “So, we need to help ourselves and help Nigeria to come to the point where our human capacity development is much more responsive and that can only happen if we improve quality of the food we eat.

“So, it will be a beehive of activities and we shall all work together to launch a national smart mother platform and the major thing for all of us here is that we cannot stop malnutrition in Nigeria if we don’t invest in women. We must invest in women, we must give them a voice so as to stop malnutrition in Nigeria.”

Speaking on the activities lined up for the fair, the Chairman of the Planning Committee, Mr. Fidelis Duker, said a quiz component for youngsters aimed at catching them young and getting them more involved academically has been factored into the event. Duker pointed out that a 16 schools are to compete for this year’s national quiz competition at Enugu.

The quiz would comprise basic sciences like Physics, Chemistry, Biology and some elements of Mathematics, saying the kids to compete are supposed to be in their final year, about to write their NECO, GCE or JAMB, even as he said the competition is free.