F.A.O. welcomes new officer

05 May 2017, 12:00AM

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (F.A.O) Subregional Office of the Pacific Islands has welcomed their new Nutrition and Food Systems Officer, Joseph Nyemah.

A Liberian-Canadian national, Mr. Nyemah arrives directly from Malawi where he was with the One UN as humanitarian advisor. 

“In this role, I led inter-cluster coordination for the food security, agriculture, nutrition, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (W.A.S.H), education, protection and health clusters over a $395 million humanitarian response,” Mr. Nyemah said. 

“Working for the One UN did not only help me to see humanitarian and development work from a broader and integrated vantage point; it also strengthened my partnership building capacity across different UN and government agencies, NGOs, etc…”

In his new role as Nutrition and Food Systems Officer for F.A.O, Mr. Nyemah hopes to contribute to the work of his colleagues in F.A.O and across other UN agencies, governments, national and regional N.G.O and civil society partners to improve resilience in agriculture, nutrition and food security. 

“I want for us to collaboratively study the contextual applicability of a food systems approach – the analysis of food from the handling of the seeds to the point of disposal – and how the generated knowledge can inform programming,” he said.

Mr. Nyemah is a former food security cluster coordinator with F.A.O in Mali, West Africa, where he coordinated two IPC – Integrated Phase Classification analyses for food and nutrition security. 

He also worked in HQ in Rome with the World Food Program as an integrated context analyst in VAM (Vulnerability Analysis Mapping), where he led the publication of “Tracking the Development of Urban Food Security Assessment Tools: 2010 to 2015.” 

While working for the Paris-based Action Contre La Faim, he managed integrated agriculture and food processing, aquaculture, nutrition and socioeconomic analyses in Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, the Somali Region of Ethiopia, South Sudan and Sri Lanka from 1996 to 2005.

From 2008 to 2014, Mr. Nyemah worked in the Canadian public service across community, rural and economic development. His last post was director of regional planning, government of Nova Scotia, where he developed Nova Scotia’s first ever social enterprise strategy.  

Mr. Nyemah has published in several peer-reviewed academic journals, for example, the Australian Journal for Studies in Continuing Education, and Canadian Social Studies Journal.

He is has a multi-disciplinary academic background that straddles rural sociology/development, development economics, political science and adult education. 

Mr. Nyemah’s research interest looks at the politics and interconnectedness of gender, culture, migration, and capacity building. He is a research fellow with the European-North American “Borders in Globalization (BIG)” project and the Delmore “Buddy” Daye Afrocentric Learning Institute, Halifax. 

Mr. Nyemah is joined in Samoa with his family including his wife, four year old son, two year old daughter, and his sister.

05 May 2017, 12:00AM
Samoa Observer

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