Stephen Greenberg The Covid-19 crisis has exposed the stark inequalities that persist in our society. Vast disparities in access to healthcare, food, shelter, personal safety, water, transport and communications have been laid bare. Aside from imposing a lockdown, the government has been in disarray in responding to...
Riaan Grobler Unemployment and the subsequent loss of income remain key concerns for South Africans and have a direct impact on food security, research by Ask Afrika has shown. It found that food security at a household level is low, and that one in three adults went to bed...
Event details Date: 27 May 2020Time: 15:00 to 16:30Venue: Online via Zoom, registration requiredAttend event via webcast The distribution of food parcels quickly led to conflict in several communities across South Africa. How sustainable is the provision of food directly to those who need it, and can it be done fairly? Do food parcels...
In South Africa a range of social solidarity networks have emerged to respond to the COVID-19 hunger crisis. They are a vital part of the societal response because of their speed, innovation, and local responsiveness. They complement the central role of government. Yet the government is...
After 4 weeks of motivated competition, Oribi Village and partners Wakanda Food Acceleratorand the Southern Africa Food Lab are pleased to announce the top two projects that have been chosen to disrupt and reimagine collectively with us South African's food system. Both have won a fully paid incubation/acceleration support from ORIBI and...
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...