Strengthening partnerships in Africa through the GFEI Food Systems Research Week
By Professor Stephen Whitfield
Last month, the Global Food and Environment Institute welcomed visitors from eastern and southern Africa to Leeds to participate in an International Food Systems Research Week. The aim of the week was to strengthen research partnerships in areas of critical importance to the region, including in food trade, market access, livestock production, and safety and quality regulation.
Our visitors for the week included representatives from the South Africa Pork Producers Association, the Southern African Business Development Forum, the National Agricultural Marketing Council of South Africa, Guateng Province local government and Universities in Kenya, Zambia and South Africa.
It was evident in discussions about the challenges that are faced in eastern and southern Africa, particularly in the livestock sector, that emergent animal disease risk and biosafety concerns, climate change impacts, and limited capacities and infrastructure for trade regulation are all intrinsically linked to each other. We were also struck by the multiple ways in which these challenges connect international geographies, whether that be through the global trading of commodities, the translation of food quality and safety standards through supply chains, or the inequitable distribution of climate change drivers and impacts.
There are a lot of opportunities to bring together expertise and resources across academia and industry and across continents to facilitate valuable systems research. Spending time with our visitors at the University Farm and in the Food Science and Biology laboratories on campus stimulated discussions about a variety of potential opportunities. These ranged from ideas about collaborating on research on circularity in multi-sited livestock production systems and exploring complementarities between nutrition and regenerative agriculture, to sharing learning on farrowing crates and post-weaning feed additives in pig farming under different climates, and more.
There is clear value in building international partnerships oriented around interdisciplinary and challenge-led food systems research, but this is, of course, not without challenges. Lack of access to resources, the competitive nature of research opportunities, limited technical capacities and skills gaps were all discussed as common, but differently experienced, across the higher education sector. Our colleagues from eastern and southern Africa also raised a number of acute context-specific constraints that they encounter when it comes to research leadership and effective collaboration, such as ineligibility for some research funding, gaps in infrastructure and facilities, unreliable electricity supply, and barriers to international travel.
It is imperative that international partnerships are built on principles of knowledge equity and shared commitments to addressing barriers to participation. One of our visitors, Prof Cecilia Onyango from the University of Nairobi, is currently being supported as a Cheney Fellow at the University of Leeds as well as being a local Knowledge Equity Network champion. One of the key objectives of this fellowship is for Prof Onyango to work closely with academic and professional services staff across Leeds to explore ways to build knowledge equity and strengthen sustainable long term international partnerships.
In a post that I wrote last year, I argued that individual relationships are key to building equitable institutional partnerships. The Food Systems Research week offered dedicated time for individual relationships between individuals on different continents to connect over shared interests and interconnected challenges. I hope that those relationships will lead to exciting, impactful and equitable collaborations and that, as an Institute, GFEI can continue to help make such interactions possible.
If you have ideas for networking, mobilisation and partnership building around food system challenges, internationally or more locally, please do get in touch to discuss ways in which these might be supported by GFEI globalfood@leeds.ac.uk.
