TRANSFORMING AFRICA’S URBAN FOOD ENVIRONMENTS THROUGH STRENGTHENING LINKAGES BETWEEN FOOD SYSTEMS STAKEHOLDERS IN CITIES ACROSS EUROPE AND THE CONTINENT

Project Information

AfriFOOD-Links

Grant agreement ID: 101084322

DOI

10.3030/101084322

EC signature date 24 October 2022

Start date 1 December 2022

End date 30 November 2026

Funded under

• Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment

Total cost

€ 11 816 305,09

EU contribution

€ 11 816 305,09

Coordinated by

ICLEI-LOCAL GOVERNMENTS FOR SUSTAINABILITY-AFRICA
South Africa

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AfriFOOD-Links (TRANSFORMING AFRICA’S URBAN FOOD ENVIRONMENTS THROUGH STRENGTHENING LINKAGES BETWEEN FOOD SYSTEMS STAKEHOLDERS IN CITIES ACROSS EUROPE AND THE CONTINENT)

Reporting period: 2022-12-01 to 2024-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

AfriFOODlinks aims to address the systemic underpinnings of food insecurity and environmental impact, to lead to real transformation. AfriFOODlinks views urban food environments as the key arena for improving nutrition and reducing environmental impact in African cities. This is because food environments are where residents make the choices about the food they eat and it is where the food security priorities of food availability, access, agency, utilization and stability manifest. AfriFOODlinks proposes to influence three key drivers of food environment form, function and dynamics. These are Infrastructure Investment, Social and Cultural Preference & Business Innovation.
AfriFOODlinks aims to improve food and nutrition security while delivering positive outcomes for climate and the environment, and building socio-ecological resilience in 65+ cities by:
1) promoting public shifts to sustainable healthy diets;
2) transforming urban food environments through real-world socio-technical experiments;
3) promoting inclusive multi-actor governance to empower public officials, established and informal small businesses, communities, youth and women with ownership and agency to shape their food systems; and
4) accelerating innovative, women- and youth-led agri-food businesses to support local value addition and inclusive economic participation.

AfriFOODlinks invests in direct food system change in 5 African Hub Cities and invites 10 African and 5 European Sharing Cities to join them on a mutual-learning journey, to share their innovative food systems work and to co-design pilot projects for implementation in each Sharing City. Through a diverse set of AfriFOODlinks interventions, these cities will become beacons of inspiration for urban food systems transitions across the continent. Novel practices, methodological guides, and public awareness toolkits will be developed and shared with 45+ Network Cities in Africa, Europe and Global South regions, who can adopt, adapt and replicate outcomes.

The partner cities include Cape Town, Kisumu, Mbale, Ouagadougou and Tunis as Hub Cities, with Arusha, Antananarivo, Quelimane, Dakar, Lusaka, Windhoek, Tamale, Bukavu, Chefchaouen, Lisbon, Milan, Montpellier, Bruges and Turin as Sharing Cities.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

All 15 African and 5 EU cities have been onboarded. These include 5 hub cities and 10 sharing cities. These reflect a diverse spread of primary and secondary cities across all major regions on the continent

Cities have been subdivided into 5 clusters based on shared areas of interest and learning objectives. A process of in person city-city exchanges has been developed and initiated for each cluster.

A Network Cities Strategy was developed and series of online learning and exchange processes informed by a Network Cities Survey have begun. MOU’s have been drafted with ICLEI regional offices in Latin America and South Asia to support in expanding the global reach of AfriFOODlinks through its network cities process.

Progress on the 4 main project objectives:

1) Applying an urban food systems lens to promote shifts to healthy, sustainable diets

Embedded researchers have been appointed in 19/20 project cities. These researchers have delivered 15 State of City Food System reports - one for each of the African cities. These reports provide a comprehensive analysis of each city food system using a shared food system lens.

Deep ethnographic research into the nutritional status and everyday food struggles of vulnerable groups has begun in the hub cities. These are on track for completion in month 36.

The process for establishing knowledge hubs in each of the cities has been initiated.

2) Transforming urban food environments through real-world socio-technical experiments;

African Hub Cities:
In the five African Hub Cities the development and implementation of real-world-socio-technical experiments proposals have been submitted (D4.4) but there continue to be challenges and delays with this process in all five hub cities.

African Sharing Cities
The real-world-socio-technical experiments proposals for sharing cities are being developed as part of the city-city exchanges. These will be completed in September.

In spite of some delays in the Hub cities, the process of conceptualising these real world experiments and the extensive multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder consultations that have gone into preparing for implementation, have yielded rich learnings for the project from a research and governance perspective. It has also proven to be a powerful mechanism through which to bring together urban food system actors into new forms of collaboration and cooperation in all 5 hub cities.

2) Promoting inclusive multi-actor governance to empower public officials, small businesses and communities with ownership and agency to shape their food systems

All work packages have supported this objective through activities such as intercity policy dialogues during city-city exchanges (WP6), extensive public consultation processes leading up to real work socio-technical experiments (WP4), online practitioner dialogues (WP6), urban food system events hosted by youth ambassadors (WP6), and many other activities.
However, the work underpinning this object has been located primarily within WP2 under three tasks: Task 2.1 “to Assess and Evaluate Existing Food Related Governance” has been finalised (deliverables D2.1 2.2 and 2.3) Task 2.2 “Celebrating urban food cultures and systems through Food Dialogues” and 2.3 “Strengthening food related governance processes of formal and informal urban food systems through multi- stakeholder processes”. These have all started and are ongoing. Details are provided in section 1.2.2 below.

4) accelerating innovative, women- and youth-led agri-food businesses to support local value addition and inclusive economic participation.

This objective has primarily been supported by WP3 through the initiation of Task 3.1 and Task 3.2. Task 3.1 (Assess the barriers to the development of profitable and sustainable small scale and informal agri-food businesses in hub cities and identify entry points to strengthen the small-scale circular entrepreneurial ecosystem in hub cities) has studied the constraints that prevent food-based MSMEs from scaling up their business ideas have been identified and described these in each of the Hub Cities. Based on these findings, Task 3.2 (Incubate innovative women- and youth-led businesses that contribute to the transition to sustainable urban food systems in the 5 hub cities ) has begun, with the first rounds of training and selection completed in 3 of the 5 Hub Cities. A gender-sensitive and youth-focused recruitment campaign was executed which succeeded in over 50% female participants. The majority of these participants were youth.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Work is ongoing, no direct results to report yet. But for detailed descriptions of work package activities see Technical Report Part B.