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...
In early October, a group of actors involved in the local food system gathered at Oribi Village in Gardens, Cape Town for a design-thinking workshop focused on strengthening the contribution of smallholder farmers to a more sustainable and healthy food system in the Western Cape....
By Magnificent Mndebele Food For Mzansi has enabled me to tell the stories of a series of tumultuous agricultural journeys and successes of black urban farmers around Gauteng. However, a considerable number of these unsung agricultural heroes and heroines sing appreciation hymns to someone who has never...
The Southern Africa Food Lab mourns the sudden passing of public health activist and teacher Professor David Sanders. His passing leaves a huge gap in the fight to address the unprecedented levels of obesity and stunting in South Africa which continues have such severe public health consequences....
How do we transform our food system to something that is ultimately about nourishment– about nourishing the nation, Southern Africa, or ourselves? It’s about engaging head and heart with complexity First, we need to recognise the complexity in the system and then engage that complexity with both...
On Friday night (3 May 2019) a Coastal Food Jam took place at Soute in Salt River. The event was the culmination of a two day Transformation Lab (T-Lab) for Coastal Wild Food stakeholders in the Western Cape. “A diverse group of folk, including traditional small-scale...
An urgent global shift towards sustainable plant-based diets has been touted as a crucial ingredient to cut greenhouse gas emissions from food systems and improve health outcomes. This is among a raft of measures to tackle climate change, contained in a new high-level report by the...
by Charlie Shackleton Over half a million households in South Africa’s former homelands disengaged from farming between 2011 and 2016, according to Statistics South Africa. This represents a loss of one in five crop farming households. The former homelands were the ten areas demarcated under the previous...
Nobody wants to be trapped in a menial, minimum-wage job. Yet in commercial and subsistence agriculture alike, these are the vast majority of jobs that the sector offers young South Africans. Relative to other sectors, agriculture is not a big contributor to gross domestic product (GDP)...