Nutrition in emergency situations - Ready-to-use Supplementary Food (RUSF) and Ready-to-use Therapeutic Food (RUTF)

Scaling up locally produced RUSF and RUTF to improve access for more children in need; enabling national governments to adopt context-adapted, higher-acceptability formulations and establish regulatory frameworks in line with Codex CXG 95-2022; reducing transport and production costs and carbon footprint; contributing to climate change adaptation and mitigation, sustainable resource management, disaster risk reduction and biodiversity protection; providing WHO-certified alternative supplementary foods based on child health status and local conditions to complement or replace exclusive RUTF use for non-severe cases; fostering local value chains, SMEs and food industries in Africa; implementing the Food 2030 priorities on nutrition, climate, circularity and innovation; advancing the AU-EU FNSSA roadmap and supporting humanitarian-development-peace nexus actions.

Research and innovation collaboration between European and African partners to: (1) increase use of local protein, micronutrient and fatty-acid sources in RUSF/RUTF production; (2) adapt crop and marine ingredient varieties to local agro-ecological and climate conditions while preserving biodiversity; (3) reduce climate footprint of production and transport; (4) apply interdisciplinary and multi-actor approaches throughout food systems; (5) ensure compliance with Codex CXG 95-2022 and WHO certification; (6) identify safe, context-specific alternatives to an ‘all-RUTF’ approach based on child health status and local conditions; (7) cluster with existing AU-EU FNSSA, CCSE and Innovation Union initiatives; (8) allocate up to 20% of EU funding for cascading grants to third parties with a clear selection process; (9) integrate SSH contributions to address regulatory, cultural, gender and market dimension; (10) provide mentoring and acceleration spaces for innovative business and social innovation concepts.