Enhancing Resilience in Food Systems
The Flagship Project Enhancing Resilience in Food Systems seeks to directly contribute to food systems resilience by supporting decision-making in practice through stakeholder participation and academic education. Several projects are ongoing in countries across Africa and in Switzerland.
The Flagship Project Enhancing Resilience in Food Systems was initiated in 2013 and is led by World Food System Center member Johan Six. Support for the multiple subprojects comes from a wide range of food system actors, such as the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture (FOAG), the UN FAO, multi-national companies and organizations, and academic partners. Here are some updates from the last few months.
A new phase starts
The RUNRES (Rural-Urban Nexus: Establishing a nutrient loop to improve city-region food system Resilience) team has successfully ensured a second phase of the project. From 2023-2027, the team will focus on scaling up the successful innovations in four countries: Ethiopia, Rwanda, South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
PhotoVoice Exhibition in Kigali
Melanie Surchat presented the photovoice exhibition in Kigali in June at the Center for Photography. A successful and insightful vernissage was followed by a talk with some of the involved stakeholders. Some of the biowaste workers were also there to speak for themselves on the positive aspects of job creation and also about some of the challenges of the work.
Resilience and sustainability of regional food systems
Together with Dr. Dominique Barjolle, Paul Donadieu de Lavit has been working on a regional food system assessment tool. It aims at helping policymaker making a diagnostic of their region in order to build regional food and agriculture strategies that will enhance the resilience and sustainability of their food system. Paul has done the assessment of the food system of Valposchiavo in Switzerland last summer (2022) and is now working closely with the "Gros de Vaud" association to deliver an analysis of their regional food system which might be used to monitor the regional development plan they have just launched. Finally, Paul is also now analyzing the food system of "Franche Montagne" region in Jura. Through the analysis of these three food systems, he aims to capture the diversity of the Swiss agriculture and consolidate the assessment too.
CANALLS
Prof. Johan Six and Dr. Moritz Laub were in Nairobi for the kick-off meeting of the project CANALLS. The overall objective of CANALLS is to drive agroecological transitions in the humid tropics of Central and Eastern Africa via multi-actor transdisciplinary Agroecology Living Labs (ALLs). The first step is to set up 8 ALLs in DRC, Burundi (BR), Cameroon (CR) and Rwanda (RW), enabling over 20,000 farmers to co-create and benefit from tailored blends of agroecological practices. In parallel, 14 African and 8 European partners will engage in solid multi-actor collaboration and policy dialogues with rural communities, advisory services and governments to develop practical tools and evaluate the socio-economic and environmental performance of agroecology, employing the evidence generated to build capacity and share good practices as well as to deliver sustainable business models, facilitating access to markets.
The project’s vision is to create and sustain a growing network, the Central and Eastern Africa Network of ALLs (CANoLL), that builds on EU-AU cooperation to jointly conduct transdisciplinary research, offer scientific support and drive coordinated action for delivering holistic agroecological solutions that meet the challenges of food systems in the humid tropics of Central and Eastern Africa.
More info: external pagehttps://www.canalls-project.eu/about/concept-objectives