**1. Introduction**

Quality of life and well-being are strongly associated with access and availability of food, which meets biological, affective, cultural and environmental criteria. The effects of foods on wellbeing were strongly related to physical health, pleasure and emotional aspects. In this context, the human right to adequate food is one of the social rights recognized by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 2200A (XXI) of 16 December 1966. Forward, the right to adequate food was the subject of Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights General Comment No. 12: The Right to Adequate Food (Art. 11), adopted at the Twentieth Session of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, on 12 May 1999 [1]. In this document, the right to adequate food contemplates the dimensions of Food and Nutritional Security, namely, the availability and access to quality food in sufficient quantity, without compromising any other right and permanently being able to provide health and well-being. Extreme poverty rates violate the right to food and present themselves as one of the main challenges being faced among countries on the African continent.

In this context, in 2012, the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) approved the CPLP Food and Nutrition Security Strategy, with the firm purpose of ending hunger and misery in member countries. The CPLP Strategy seeks to strengthen the governance of public policies in the area, encourage the production of food to improve their availability from family farming and promote social protection by improving access to food, fighting hunger and malnutrition.

Within the scope of this strategy is the search for the engagement of all sectors of society including social organizations, universities, parliamentarians, the private sector and the government. It was in this context that the CPLP University Mechanism emerged as an induced academic network that seeks to face the difficulties encountered in academic practice and at the same time actively participate in solutions to local and national problems.

This chapter presents the Mechanism of Universities of the CPLP, in the perspective of building autonomous networks, which, in addition to institutionality, conform to organizational instruments capable of promoting creative solutions, overcoming limitations and contributing to the consolidation of the food and nutritional security strategy at CPLP. For that, it brings a brief history of the construction of the strategy, presenting the perspective in each of the countries that make up the bloc, given that the different countries that make up the CPLP have different priorities in the Food Security and Nutrition agenda.

*Networking and Participatory Research Promoting Quality of Life and Well-Being… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.97730*
