The University of Ghana has taken on a continental leadership role in food systems science after hosting the launch of a new African-led platform designed to translate agricultural and nutrition research directly into government policy and public health action.
The Africa Regional Collaborative for Agriculture, Nutrition and Health (ANH-ARC) was launched at the University of Ghana in Accra on April 30, 2026, bringing together leading African research and policy institutions to strengthen evidence, policy and investments in food systems and nutrition across the continent.
Positioned as the African node of the global ANH Academy Science-Policy Platform, the ANH-ARC is co-led by three African institutions: the University of Ghana, the Policy Studies Institute in Ethiopia, and Stellenbosch University in South Africa. The initiative connects African institutions to a worldwide network of more than 13,000 researchers, practitioners and policymakers working to strengthen the role of evidence in shaping food systems, nutrition and health outcomes.
The Gates Foundation is among the initiative’s backers, with Ana Maria Loboguerrero, the foundation’s Director of Adaptive and Equitable Food Systems, describing it as support offered “at a critical moment for African food systems.”
Professor Amos Laar, Professor of Public Health Nutrition at the University of Ghana and founding Director and Principal Investigator of the ANH-ARC, framed the platform as a structural fix to a longstanding policy failure.
“Agriculture, nutrition, and health can no longer operate in silos,” he said, calling for integrated, evidence-driven approaches to policymaking across the continent.
The platform will operate through four sub-regional nodes covering Southern, Western, Eastern and Northern Africa, and is aligned with the African Union’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), the Kampala Declaration, and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), aimed at coordinating evidence-driven food systems transformation at scale.
The initiative is designed to ensure that scientific research moves beyond academic journals and into practical policies that improve diets, health outcomes and rural livelihoods across a continent where millions continue to face malnutrition, unaffordable food and diet-related disease despite agriculture remaining central to most national economies.
The launch attracted participants from academia, governments, civil society and international institutions spanning the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Sweden, Rwanda, Senegal and Botswana, reflecting the breadth of institutional interest in building a more evidence-driven approach to Africa’s food and nutrition challenges.
