Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of urbanization in the world, exacerbating issues of food and nutrition security and resulting, at least in part, in a worrying trend of increased incidences of non-communicable diseases. With their relative lack of space and infrastructure, access to adequate and...
Location: South Africa and the Netherlands Start: September 2018 The Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) seeks applications for a postdoctoral fellowship on African city food systems, beginning early September 2018. The postdoc will be based in South Africa for approximately 75%...
Three students from the USA, Germany and Vietnam, recently completed a Masters Thesis which looks at ways that social labs like the Southern Africa Food Lab are and could be evaluated. It was written as part of the Master´s program “Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability”, a...
When corporate staff from the South African finance sector arrived at Spier wine farm and were loaded into the back tray of Farmer Angus’ giant farm truck, they immediately knew they were in for something different. On 30 January 2018 the Food Lab facilitated a...
The Southern Africa Food Lab, in partnership with The Presidency, recently hosted a dialogue to foster coherence in South Africa food security policy. The dialogue was attended by 30 government officials and academics including representatives from DPME, DAFF, DCE, GDE, DBE, DEA, The Department of...
Ralph Hamann, Research Director at UCT’s Graduate School of Business and a member of the Southern Africa Food Lab’s advisory board, recently returned from a Harvard Workshop on Cross-Sector Innovation where he presented a paper based on the experiences of the Food Lab. “Through an indepth analysis...
The Southern Africa Food Lab’s work addressing smallholder development through dialogue and social innovation in the SA food system has been recognized by the UN’s 10-year framework of programmes (10YFP) on sustainable consumption and production patterns within their Sustainable Food Systems Programme. The project is now...
The importance of nutrition in development is undisputed, and yet it is only in recent years that it has been taken seriously. Why is this? Professor Sheryl Hendricks recently explored this question in the Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa’s Tomlinson Commemorative Lecture at the University...
The identification of the source of the Listeriosis outbreak which has swept through the nation killing 180 people to date, has seen a wide-scale recall of polony, Russians and viennas over the past week. The outbreak, which the World Health Organization is calling the largest...
by Mervyn Abrahams Since the announcement of the increase of VAT from 14% to 15%, many politicians, economists and other ‘experts’ have argued that working class households are protected from the negative impact of the increase in VAT because certain foods are zero-rated. We would have...