GAIN Hosts Digital Lab on Fortification Quality Traceability Plus
Fadekemi Ajakaiye
The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) hosted a groundbreaking Digital Lab on December 5th, 2024, which was designed to revolutionize food fortification monitoring in Nigeria through the Digital Fortification Quality Traceability Plus (DFQT+) platform.
This innovative digital platform represents a significant leap forward in addressing long-standing challenges within Nigeria’s food fortification ecosystem. Developed with input from key stakeholders including government agencies, food producers, and technical advisory groups, the DFQT+ platform aims to create unprecedented transparency and traceability in the critical area of micronutrient fortification.
Since its launch in April 2024, the platform has already brought together six pioneering stakeholders, including regulatory agencies like the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), and Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), alongside leading food producers such as PZ Wilmar, Sunola Oil, and Apple & Pears Limited.
The Digital Lab represented a pivotal moment in scaling up this digital initiative. The event will provide a comprehensive exploration of the DFQT+ platform, offering participants an immersive experience that includes platform demonstrations, panel discussions featuring current users, and hands-on practical interactions in a demo environment.
Participants represented a diverse cross-section of Nigeria’s food and nutrition ecosystem, including food producers across various sectors like edible oil, wheat flour, sugar, salt, and margarine. The event also welcomes producers of food micronutrients, government agencies, industry associations, civil society organizations, research institutes, and media representatives.
The core objectives of the Digital Lab extend beyond mere technological showcase. The event aims to demonstrate the platform’s effectiveness in monitoring fortification quality, highlight its benefits to potential participants, gather crucial feedback for future improvements, and ultimately encourage broader voluntary participation across multiple food production sectors.
A key highlight of the event was the experience-sharing panel, where current platform users will candidly discuss their journey, challenges, and the tangible benefits they’ve observed. This real-world insight is expected to provide compelling evidence of the platform’s potential to transform food fortification practices.
The practical interaction sessions allowed participants to directly engage with the DFQT+ platform, uploading trial data and experiencing its user-friendly interface. This hands-on approach is designed to demystify the technology and showcase its accessibility to organizations of varying technical capabilities.
At its core, the DFQT+ platform addresses several critical challenges in food fortification: weak enforcement mechanisms, lack of transparency, limited traceability, and resource constraints. By leveraging digital tools and robust IT systems, the platform provides a secure, locally-hosted solution that ensures data integrity, privacy, and seamless sharing across the food production value chain.
The Digital Lab represents more than just a technological demonstration—it is a collaborative effort to enhance nutritional quality and transparency in Nigeria’s food system. By bringing together diverse stakeholders, GAIN hopes to create a more accountable, efficient, and ultimately healthier food fortification ecosystem.
Samson Rendav, the Quality Assurance Manager, Apple and Pest Limited, said, “Basically, food fortification generally of course, we know why it is important to ensure the nutrition of the community, of the society, is improved. Unlike before, this platform actually gave us the means and the opportunity to know more about the insight that entails what the food fortification is. Through this same platform, we were able to have an open and transparent system that tells so much about the quantity, the measurement and the technology transfer in food fortification.
“It is very important, as I’ve said earlier, it actually helps us to have insight about the process itself, food fortification itself, and also in the technology transfer aspect of it.
“Training for personnels and also the process, the process and improvement. It has actually helped us to improve on our process in order to maintain the standard of whatever food we are sending into the society.”
Eva Edwards, Director of Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Directorate at NAFDAC, said, “What we’re doing today is strengthening the National Food fortification programme. So I should give a little background and say that we have mandatory food fortification of some selected food vehicles. So there’s wheat flour, maize flour, and composite flour. We have vegetable oil, we have sugar. And before those started in 1993 we started iodization of salt. So what we’re doing here today is working with partners on the digital fortification, quality, traceability plus platform.
This is supposed to be about strengthening food systems using data driven means. And so what this is supposed to do, let me speak for NAFDAC and other regulators that have a mandate for monitoring food fortification compliance is that it is going to help us to begin to see from the side of the industry, real time, their fortification data. And this speaks a lot to traceability. So as a regulator, it means that instead of being physically on site at each of the producers locations, we can sit in the comfort of our offices or wherever we have access to the platform and see the data that they are generating from their fortification activities. And so that will activate us to see who is doing, who is meeting those levels, because there are standards that the fortification must not fall beneath. So, for example, for vegetable oil, we say it must be fortified to a minimum level of 20,000 IU per kilogram. So we can see the data that they are generating this DFQT plus what it’s called the DFQT plus platform, the traceability platform, is being piloted right now with three vegetable oil industries, and we are looking at the level of vitamin E fortification. So if we see that the levels are below 20,000 IU, then that activates us to step out and go into that facility. Otherwise, it reduces the regulatory burden on both sides for the producer, it means that we can take decisions right from the office. It frees up our own time to do other activities. So this is a win, win situation. We have all been on board the three regulatory agencies that’s NAFDAC, SON and the FCPC. So we are testing and piloting the platform, and hopefully, as we go, as we progress, all the vegetable oil producers will be onboarded. It’s something they’re doing willingly, and so we appreciate them also for being the first, the three that have come on board for agreeing to pilot the platform. So it’s all about traceability, it’s all about the quality of the food fortification, and at the end of the day, it’s for the benefit of the Nigerian consumer, because we want to be sure, and to be able to make sure that what is put on offer for sale to the Nigerian public. is food that has been adequately fortified to the levels stipulated by the Nigerian industrial standards for fortification. And by the food fortification regulations of NAFDAC.
The issue of certification is a whole lot. Let’s just also start from the farm level. I mean, apart from fortifying from the factory level and also at the farm level. What is the collaboration right now? Because a few farmers also have limited access to fortifying and all that.
“Okay, so I just need to make a clarification. What we’re doing here now is large scale food fortification. This happens at the level of production. This is not the one that goes back to the farm level. This is large scale food fortification. And this took up in Nigeria for these three selected food vehicles I told you about, that are for mandatory fortifications. So just to repeat, that’s the flour. So that’s your wheat flour, maize flour, composite flour, it’s vegetable oil as well as sugar.Yes, those are the large scale food fortification for salts. We all know that that started a lot earlier, salt iodization, 1993, these other ones I speak about, came on board in the early 2000s so it’s a journey for Nigeria. This is a journey we have been on for a long amount of time, and we have had successes along the way. But with everything, there is always a continual improvement. So what you see here today is transiting the manual information we get on site onto a digital platform so that we can access that information. As regulators, the producers can put in the information at their own level, so the government can see what they’re doing. And we appreciate that they are able to do this because it’s been done of free will. It’s voluntary, so it’s a partnership, and that is what it usually is about. It’s about the government collaborating with the private sector for the benefit of the population. So we are hoping that this puts us a little bit more ahead on our food fortification journey. Know that I keep using the word journey because that’s what it is. We’re heading somewhere. We’re not quite there yet. We’ve made a lot of progress along the way, but there’s still a lot more to be done.”
Innocent Mohammad, Head of Nutrition and Tobacco Division, Standards Organization of Nigeria said, “Standard is the common language in trade. So, without a standard, be rest assured that there isn’t going to be a system. So what we did, and what we have been doing, is to ensure that we provide standard for the fortification levels for all the food vehicles and by virtue of IT solutions, due to emerging IT technologies, this platform has already assisted the area of fortification monitoring, and therefore ours here is to ensure that the platform works. The platform should be able to recognize those values as set in the Nigerian standard, so that real time data generated can be compared with those established values in the Nigerian industrial standards. So deviation from those values causes an issue. I mean, it raised an issue, and those are the areas that we’ll be looking at. Why did you go below this? Because our intention is that, if this works, it will reduce the time we spend in going for fiscal investigation. We will only reduce that just to do an unannounced investigation for verification. So this is very important and very appropriate for the monitoring of fortification.”
