Neema Lugangira is a global policy and development finance leader with over 20 years of experience advancing nutrition, food systems, and human capital across Africa and internationally. She currently serves as Co-Chair of the Executive Committee of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, representing 66 countries, where she provides strategic leadership on global nutrition governance, policy alignment, and programme development, working across the UN system, governments, and development partners to drive coordinated action and accountability.
Neema is the Founder of Agri Thamani Foundation, a UNCCD-accredited non-profit organisation advancing nutrition-sensitive agriculture, food safety systems, and school nutrition reform in Tanzania. She successfully secured FAO support for the Government of Tanzania to develop the National Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture Action Plan and played a catalytic role in initiating national School Feeding Guidelines, Tanzania’s entry into the UN School Meals Coalition, and the inclusion of nutrition commitments in the 2020–2025 election manifestos of three major political parties. Her work has contributed to national policy frameworks and large-scale programmes, including a school nutrition initiative reaching over 500,000 students.
As a Member of Parliament (2020–2025) and Tanzania’s National Food Systems Champion (2021–2024), Neema drove high-impact policy, systems, and financing outcomes at national, continental, and global levels. She played a central role in advancing Tanzania’s food systems transformation agenda, including convening multi-stakeholder processes, shaping national commitments under the UN Food Systems Summit, and strengthening the integration of nutrition within agriculture and development policy. She secured USD 104 million in World Bank financing for gender equality and human capital development. In 2022, she founded the African Food Systems Parliamentary Network (AFSPaN) and currently serves as its Vice Chair.
Under her leadership, AFSPaN secured formal recognition of parliaments within the African Union CAADP framework through the Kampala Declaration (January 2025), strengthening accountability in food systems transformation. She also provided technical support to the development of a Global Parliamentary Toolkit on School Meals with WFP and IPNEd, enabling legislators worldwide to strengthen nutrition financing and oversight. She has contributed to positioning nutrition within broader economic, financing, and food systems policy discussions at continental and global levels.
Through her role as a Board Member of the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and IMF (2023-2025), Neema has advanced global policy dialogue on nutrition financing, including advocacy on sovereign debt restructuring and innovative financing mechanisms to protect fiscal space for human capital investments. She has contributed to shaping discourse on nutrition as a global security and humanitarian priority, particularly in the context of declining ODA and global instability.
Neema is a recognised thought leader, authoring several policy and opinion pieces on development financing and nutrition. Her recent work focuses on the implications of declining ODA and the need to reposition nutrition within global financing and security agendas.