Fostering Innovation for Sustainable Food Security: The Southern Africa Food Lab

By McLachlan, M., Hamann, R., Sayers, V., Kelly, C. and Drimie, S. • 2015

Abstract

This chapter describes the Southern Africa Food Lab (SAFL) as a proactive social innovation, and explores the challenges and opportunities encountered in setting up such an initiative. Food insecurity and hunger persist in urban and rural areas in South Africa, with high levels of reported hunger and persistent chronic and micronutrient malnutrition. The SAFL works to facilitate shifts towards an equitable and sustainable food system, by stimulating ongoing dialogue and collaborative learning among stakeholders, and enhancing the effectiveness, accountability and legitimacy of multi-stakeholder teams working on innovations in the food system. Key tenets of the Lab process include an emphasis on emergence rather than predetermined outcomes, creating spaces for personal reflection and authentic communication, and shared experiences of the system ‘on the ground’. Challenges include engaging the leadership of activist NGOs and community groups and to have sustained participation from senior public and private sector actors. Issues of unequal power, constrained resources and different perspectives on the balance between talking, listening and acting are likely to continue to surface and provide opportunity for reflection and innovative action as the process unfolds.

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