The 2020 Global Nutrition Report looks beyond global and national patterns, revealing significant inequalities in nutrition outcomes within countries and populations. Based on the best-available data, in-depth analysis and expert opinion rooted in evidence, the report identifies critical actions to achieve nutrition equity. Everyone deserves...
Jane Battersby This was written in the 4th week of South Africa’s lockdown period, when the country had 3465 reported Covid-19 cases and 58 deaths. It was also the week in which looting of formal and informal retailers, food trucks and distributors of food parcels began. South...
Food and Trees for Africa Have you considered the many steps between the food you buy at the shops and the farmers who produce it? These food systems play an essential role in food security. If you’re like most consumers in the global economy, you’re used...
PMBEJD |Pietermaritzburg | 8 April 2020 Observations from the supermarket floor, the waiting lines, the street, the spaza shop, the taxi, the home, the kitchen, the plate and the stomach. The attached paper is based on observations and conversations with women in Pietermaritzburg from 19th March to 7th April...
PMBEJD Research Report 28 April 2020 On Thursday 23rd April 2020 we collected food prices in Pietermaritzburg supermarkets which target the low-income market. We present these price increases from before the lockdown to this date (2 March 2020 to 23 April 2020). Last week we started...
Questions are circling about the mobilisation of 73,000 additional South African National Defence Force personnel, and whether this suggests an intensified militarisation of the lockdown. This would bode badly for community-based efforts to resolve the food crisis and signal that the state has abandoned its...
Stuart Gillespie Senior Research Fellow, The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Malnutrition is by far the biggest driver of ill-health and premature mortality in every region of the world. A slow-burn attritional problem, it does enormous damage. The COVID-19 epidemic that’s sweeping the world, meanwhile, brings a series of...
Children go without school lunch and families eke out the last of their supplies As the government grapples with finalising a plan to feed a growing number of desperately hungry people amid the Covid-19 national lockdown, shelters say they are seeing starving people who have not...
by Vishwas Satgar In the political chorus of South Africa’s rainbow nation we have often heard the refrain ‘we did not know apartheid was so bad’ or ‘we did not know apartheid had such an impact on black people’. This kind of brazen denialism is a...
Communiqué by IPES-Food, April 2020 The COVID-19 health crisis has brought on an economic crisis, and is rapidly exacerbating an ongoing food security and nutrition crisis. In a matter of weeks, COVID-19 has laid bare the underlying risks, fragilities, and inequities in global food systems, and...
by Ralph Hamann As the COVID-19 crisis unfolds, the focus of business leaders and others has been on immediate responses and short-term time horizons. This is for good reason. Yet there are initial signs of how the crisis may be shaping longer-term assumptions about business and its context. The spread...
PMBEJD tracks food prices in supermarkets that target the low-income market in Pietermaritzburg. We will continue keeping an eye on these stores during the Covid-19 pandemic and will track prices more frequently. In this media statement we cover the following: Initial price spikes in the household food...
London, 23 March 2020 Lawrence Haddad, Jess Fanzo, Steve Godfrey, Corinna Hawkes, Saul Morris and Lynnette Neufeld With the spread of COVID-19 we find ourselves plunged into a global health crisis. By most accounts we are only at the early stages of the pandemic so it...
We didn’t enter the food system to be on the front lines but that’s where we find ourselves—farmers, food distributers, and markets alike. In order for most of the population to stay home and “flatten the curve” there must be a few fearless who choose to...
By Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies The social legitimacy of the ‘COVID-19 lockdown’, government’s regulations imposed to contain the spread of the virus, is most likely to run aground unless an urgent plan can be made to ensure that everyone in the country has...
Lockdown the opportunity to disrupt and solve social problems. The 21-day lockdown that kicks off this evening shouldn’t be seen as an excuse to stagnate, but as an opportunity for innovators to co-create effective solutions to make South Africa a better place for all. In that light, three...
STATEMENT FROM THE DSI-NRF CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE IN FOOD SECURITY As South Africa prepares to shut down for 21 days to counter the rapid spread of COVID-19, promises around the maintenance of food supply chains fail to take account of the fact that food security and nutrition...
In 2018, the Southern Africa Food Lab contributed to the development of a Sustainable Food Systems process facilitated by the Global Alliance. From many submitted, five were selected to develop the Principles document I shared with you. The Global Alliance for the Future of Food is...
An interview with Southern Africa Food Lab Advisory Board member and founder of Umgibe Organics, Nonhlanhla Joye. ...
Refilwe is five months old. Born in Kayamandi township on the outskirts of Stellenbosch, Refilwe may have the aptitude to become a doctor someday, but it will never happen. The reason isn’t education, or opportunity – those may come – the reason is stunting. Refilwe’s...