Today's nutrition work calls for business, tech skills

For those headed down career paths related to nutrition and global health, experts and industry professionals aren’t just calling for medical degrees or experience in the clinical field. What’s needed, officials from UNICEF, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and political scientists told Devex, is business and tech expertise — namely MBA-holders and nutrition technologists. The call for business-savvy aid workers isn’t unique to global health. Cross-sector development naturally requires stronger finance and private sector know-how, particularly when it comes to risk assessment and accounting, Devex’s Kelli Rogers wrote a few months ago. But for nutrition and the challenges related to global hunger, business and economic expertise offers not only leverage in the food manufacturing industries — nutrition’s bread and butter — but into government budgets as well. Greg Garrett, executive director of GAIN told Devex global health isn’t lacking in solutions to malnourishment and micronutrition. What the field needs, he said, is people “who can make business sense out of these solutions so industry and government can translate them into budgets.” For every dollar spent on nutrition, the aid impact amounts to approximately $55 in returns, Bjorn Lomborg, political scientist and director of the Copenhagen Consensus Institute, told Devex on the sidelines of the #FutureFortified conference in Arusha, Tanzania. He added that the onus should be on those in the development sector “to make the argument that this is great public policy.” Margot Whiteford, president of the International Federation for Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus, added: “More education and advocacy is needed for governments about what food fortification is and the benefits of fortifying.” Convincing companies and governments that a marginal price increase — only 1 percent, in the case of flour fortified with folic acid — in the midst of political pressure requires special understanding of the long-term returns, she said. “An undernourished population can result in a 5 percent decrease in GDP, so making the economic case for a healthier population can work in governments’ favor,” Lomborg added. To encourage the private sector to join the fight against hidden hunger, Garrett also pointed to the burgeoning field of food technology. “Fortunately or unfortunately, processed foods are the way of the future in developing countries,” Garrett said. “Food technologists can appeal to the the big multinational companies who are out to make a profit on processed foods.” Garrett explained that by marrying trends in food production with nutrition and the bottom line, nutrition advocates and the private sector can create products “everyone can be proud of.” With the right expertise, the nutrition field can appeal to government and industry to, as Lomborg put it, achieve “one of the greatest returns on aid investment you can make.” Future Fortified is a special online series presented by Devex, in partnership with GAIN, exploring the impact and importance of food fortification to meet global development objectives. Visit the campaign site and join the conversation using #FutureFortified.