Over the course of a week in Accra, attendees at the Micronutrient Forum’s 7th Global Conference had the opportunity to learn how adding essential vitamins and minerals to staple foods people already eat can protect the health of billions. Global momentum to scale large-scale food fortification (LSFF) is growing, and the Micronutrient Forum’s latest Global Conference was a critical opportunity for assessing progress, sharing evidence, and agreeing on priority actions for further scaling and integration.
Before the conference began, the Food Fortification Joint Action Planning Meeting was an opportunity to strengthen collaboration among key organizations to accelerate progress. Meetings with partners of GIZ/BMZ and the Gates Foundation’s Collaborative Action Panel held during the conference assessed progress on their respective efforts to accelerate action. Attendees left enthusiastic and encouraged—and ready to build on existing evidence and momentum to address remaining barriers.
View the interactive online program or log in to the virtual platform to watch recordings.
Key Messages
- The conference provided a critical moment for collaboration—and to assess opportunities to integrate food fortification into food and health systems and social protection programs.
- New evidence from countries provides critical insights into how to scale up, how to maintain momentum, and where new investments are needed to remove barriers to scale:
- Align standards and regulations
- Strengthen and build on regional leadership and alliances
- Integrate with social protection programs to reach those most vulnerable to micronutrient deficiencies
- Implement contextualized, effective advocacy strategies to:
- Remove tax barriers on inputs
- Link with finance and recovery of domestic income
- Put women and children at the center
- Align information and knowledge systems
- Access to innovative funding mechanisms
- Embed LSFF in countries’ broader food system policies.
- The barriers to scale—financing gaps, compliance and quality control, and coordination across sectors—aren’t solved by any one organization alone. We need sustained political will, engaged private sector partners, enforceable regulatory standards, functioning fortification alliances, and strong monitoring systems for success.
All LSFF Sessions and Symposia
- WHO/FAO Guidance: Implementing Food Fortification Programmes for Public Health—Preview the updated global guidance on strengthening national fortification programs (September 28)
- Global South-South Convening on Nutrition and LSFF—Peer exchange on regulation, financing, monitoring, capacity-building, and data (September 28)
- Innovations in Vitamin A Fortification for Better Nutrition Outcomes—the stability and delivery of vitamin A through fortified bouillon, wheat flour, and sugar (September 28)
- From Ghana’s Food Biodiversity to Micronutrient Action: A Roadmap for a National Food Composition Database (September 28)
- Innovation, Efficacy and Equity in Food Fortification—emerging innovations and how to ensure fortified foods reach populations in low-resource settings (September 29)
- Rapid Fire Session—new research on quality troubleshooting tools for iron dosage compliance in wheat flour fortification programs (September 29)
- E-Poster Discussion—Access to Nutritious Foods, featuring findings on iodized salt coverage and biofortified staple crops (September 29)
- Transforming Public-Private Partnerships for Nutrition—aligning action with the BMZ Call to Action on catalyzing LSFF to end child malnutrition by 2030 (September 30)
- E-Poster Discussion: Next Steps for LSFF (September 30)
- Enabling Environment for Large-Scale Food Fortification Interventions—political will, private sector engagement, regulatory standards, fortification alliances, and public sector (September 30)
- Priority Micronutrients Under Pressure—sustaining gains and preventing relapse for iodine, vitamin A, and other priority micronutrients (September 30)
- A Pinch of Potassium: How Fortified Salt Can Bridge Nutrition and NCD Prevention at Scale—potassium-enriched salt as a two-for-one solution for micronutrient gaps and cardiovascular disease (October 1)
- Abstracts Session, Track B—the rapid-fire block features new evidence on rice fortification in Nepal, zinc-fortified fermented wheat flour in Pakistan, industry-led fortification indices in Kenya and Nigeria, and a systematic review of the effectiveness of 10 fortification vehicles (October 1)
