Programmes Coordinating Office

The Global Center for Food Systems Innovation (GCFSI) is a USAID Higher Education Solutions Network (HESN) development lab located at Michigan State University (MSU). GCFSI is a consortium led by MSU and includes other institutions such as The Energy and Resources Institute of India (TERI); Wageningen University in The Netherlands; Lincoln University of Pennsylvania, among others. The overall mission of the Center is to seek science, technology and engineering based innovative solutions to challenges to global food systems as impacted by global megatrends such as climate change, population growth,

and workforce and skills development to address the challenges of rapid urbanization and resulting pressure on natural resources such as land and water resources. GCFSI aims to support the HESN by building a network of problem thinkers who can propose, develop, implement and monitor solutions that will address the key problems identified along each of the megatrends, with added components of the five cross-cutting themes. The goal of GCFSI is to create, test and enable the scaling of effective solutions and evidence-based approaches to a defined set of future critical global trend impacting food systems through the following objectives:

• Provide decision support to improve data quality and access, as a way to promote evidence-based decision making in food systems.
• Accelerate the creation, testing and scaling up of transformative innovations, technologies and approaches in food systems.
• Create a multi-disciplinary network that shares knowledge, promotes learning, and builds mutual capacity in the area of food systems innovation.

To accomplish the above objectives, GCFSI established a regional innovation hub at the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR) in Malawi representing a partnership among the GCFSI consortium and LUANAR, and by mutual agreement, the parties expect that the regional innovation hub at LUANAR will cooperate with GCFSI in accomplishing the above mentioned goal and objectives. As such LUANAR specifically

• Collaborates with GCFSI in evaluating hypothesis and findings of literature reviews – such as the GCFSI developed white papers - on the impact of megatrends on food systems in the region.
• Collaborate in the development and implementation of research through GCFSI innovation grants, including an integrated research effort in Malawi involving LUANAR and MSU faculty and students.
• Collaborate with GCFSI faculty and students in implementing scalable innovative solutions and assist with scaling successful innovative solutions by helping establish partnership with private sector, developing business plans and technology commercialization.
• Host GCFSI faculty and students, convening/hosting conference and workshops involving multi-sectors stakeholders and linking to other initiatives pertinent to the scope of GCFSI.
• Develop and deliver educational and training programs necessary for future food systems professionals.