The document discusses the need to transform food systems in Africa to address ongoing issues like hunger, malnutrition, and environmental degradation. It makes the following key points: 1) Africa is not on track to meet UN sustainable development goals on hunger and nutrition, with over 280 million facing hunger and millions suffering from micronutrient deficiencies. 2) Food systems must be transformed to improve outcomes related to health, environment, equity and sustainability, which requires changing the behaviors of various food system actors. 3) Transforming outcomes requires food system actors to adapt their activities in response to social, economic and policy signals over time. Effective science-policy-society interfaces will be important to coordinate transformation efforts across different contexts.

1. Senior Research Fellow
IFPRI
What does transforming food systems
actually mean?
John M. Ulimwengu

2. #2023 AGRODEP CONFERENCE
Understanding Food
Systems
Source: Ericksen (2008)

3. #2023 AGRODEP CONFERENCE
On the state of
African food
system: Outcomes
• Africa is not on track to meet the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2.
• Progress towards achieving the nutrition targets by 2025 remains unacceptably slow.
• About 280 million people on the continent, over one-fifth of the population, face hunger.
• Millions of Africans suffer from widespread micronutrient deficiencies.
• Poor diet is becoming the main contributor to the burden of disease.
• Poor nutrition can lead to reduced earning potential and increased costs for healthcare.
• Individuals and families are locked into inter-generational cycles of poverty and
deprivation.
• Overweight and obesity are already significant public health concerns in many countries.

4. #2023 AGRODEP CONFERENCE
The urgency of food system
transformation is now irrefutable
(Webb et al., 2020)
• Food systems are already operating beyond some planetary boundaries (Steffen et al., 2015; . Sterner et al.,
2019).
• Agriculture and its associated land-use changes account for roughly 21% of anthropomorphic greenhouse gas
emissions between 2007 and 2016 (IPCC, 2019).
• Pressures placed on natural resources by food production have left 25% of the globe’s cultivated land area
degraded.
• Deforestation for agriculture and the intensification of agricultural landscapes are major contributors to
biodiversity loss (Daskalova et al., 2020).
• Environmental damage caused by the current management of food systems amplifies disruption — extreme
weather events precipitate forced migration, exacerbate tensions around the use of scarce freshwater or fish
stocks, and can fuel political instability (OECD, 2018)
• the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) called for a transformation of food systems that guarantees
equitable access to affordable, healthy, and safe food, produced in fair and environment-friendly ways.

5. #2023 AGRODEP CONFERENCE
Food System Transformation:
Finding the right entry point!
• What specific elements of the ‘system’ actually need to be transformed?
• Separating the food system activities (the ‘what we do’) from the outcomes (the
‘what we get’) helps to identify what specifically needs to be transformed.
• Certain individuals may have a particular interest in specific activities (which are
normally related to livelihood activities, for example, farmers in farming).
• From a societal-level viewpoint the aim is to transform (that is, improve) overall food
system outcomes, rather than enhance the efficiency or equitability of individual
activities.
• Food and nutrition security is one of the highly valued features in a society (Walker et
al., 2020).

6. #2023 AGRODEP CONFERENCE
Food System Transformation:
Objective
• The objective of food system transformation is to transform food system outcomes
from sub-optimal (state A) to more optimal (state B) (Ingram and Thornton, 2022).
 Poor diet outcomes to better diet outcomes,
 Poor food safety to better food safety,
 Poor working conditions to fairer conditions,
 Insufficient shareholder returns to increased returns,
 Unsustainable to more sustainable environmental outcomes
 Poor animal welfare to better animal welfare
• The specific goal(s) will depend on local context and view of what is important
• Trade-offs between conflicting goals will need to be addressed.

7. #2023 AGRODEP CONFERENCE
Food System Transformation:
Requires significant behavioral
changes
• Food system outcomes will not transform spontaneously but only as the result of a
food system actor changing behavior, that is, adapting behavior from state A to state
B.
 Individuals adapting their diet from excess calorific intake to sufficient intake to better manage
health outcomes.
 food processors adapting food hygiene techniques and the introduction of new technologies to
reduce food-borne disease outbreaks.
 Substantially transforming the food system outcome of obesity could be achieved by radically
reducing consumption behavior of high-energy foods.
 Adapting food formulation to reduce high-energy content while also adapting consumption
behavior.

8. #2023 AGRODEP CONFERENCE
Food System Transformation:
Actors must respond to the
signals!
• Food system activities will not adapt spontaneously, but only by their respective actors responding to a
signal.
• The signals are the social, economic, cultural, technological, political and environmental drivers that
influence the ways in which food system actors undertake their activities.
• These can be internal within the set of food system activities or external, such as a public health
message influencing consumption patterns.
• Either way, signals can be seen as an opportunity or a threat:
• a new hospitality outlet opening seeking more vegetable-based ingredients leading to a grower
adapting their production system
• an upcoming change in pesticide legislation that would require a farmer to adapt their crop
management).
• To transform food system outcomes, food system actors need to adapt their activities in response to
ever-changing signals, and it is incumbent on policymakers to be continually reassessing the way in
which policy is affecting, and can affect, the signals that drive food system actor behavior.

9. #2023 AGRODEP CONFERENCE
Food System Transformation:
Putting all together!
Ingram and Thornton (2022)

10. #2023 AGRODEP CONFERENCE
Food systems transformation
requires science–policy–society
interfaces (Singh et al., 2023)
• Efficient science–policy interfaces (SPIs) that effectively bridge all components of food systems in a
coordinated way will be key to transformation.
• Effective SPIs need to support six key functions: forecasting and monitoring, capacity building, data
collection, independent assessment, engagement and advocacy.
• Achieving a sustainable food system transformation requires an inter-linked ecosystem of ‘science–
policy–society’ interfaces (SPSIs) that embody participation, legitimacy, accountability, transparency,
rigor, capacity and empowerment.
• SPSIs will ensure ground-truthing of scientific evidence in multiple local contexts to engage with food
traditions and holders of traditional knowledge, industry and commercial food players.

11. THANK YOU