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What is food systems leadership – and can it drive transformation?

What is food systems leadership – and can it drive transformation?

Brenda Mareri and stella odhiambo

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In the complex and ever-changing world of food systems, traditional approaches often fall short of addressing the root causes of challenges like malnutrition, hunger, food insecurity, climate change and environmental degradation. This is where the concept of Food Systems Leadership becomes crucial.

Food systems leadership is a term that’s easy to understand in theory or in high-level strategy meetings. But what does it actually mean in practice? When we talk about transforming the way we produce, distribute, and consume food, what does a food systems leader do?

We look at some of the drivers and components of this approach to leadership.

Drivers of Systems Leadership

Systems Mindset: Seeing the bigger picture

Food systems leadership begins with adopting a systems mindset, which means recognising the food system as a complex web of interconnected parts, from production and distribution to consumption and waste management. It’s about actively identifying how various elements like policy, agriculture, economics, and community health interact and impact one another.

For instance, understanding how local farming practices influence nutrition in schools can lead to initiatives that support both farmers and children’s health. It’s about seeing the whole picture so that every action you take addresses the root causes of issues, not just the symptoms.

A great example is the Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) model which constitutes a school feeding approach that provides safe, diverse and nutritious food, sourced locally from smallholders employing sustainable farming practices, to children in schools. This model is being piloted across many countries in Africa and addresses issues of nutrition, market access, social inclusion and economic development.

By viewing the system as a whole, leaders can better understand the root causes of issues and develop solutions that address the broader picture rather than just the symptoms.

Collective Action: Mobilising real people for real results

At the heart of food systems leadership is the ability to mobilise collective action. This means bringing together farmers, policymakers, business leaders, and community organisations to work towards common goals.

An example could be forming coalitions that lobby for better food safety regulations or creating community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs that directly connect consumers with local farmers. It’s about harnessing the power of many to drive change that no single entity could achieve on its own.

Enabling Conditions: Laying the groundwork for success

Creating the enabling conditions that allow sustainable solutions to take root is key. This goes beyond addressing immediate problems; it’s about shaping the policies, investments, and infrastructure that support long-term change.

For example, advocating for government subsidies that encourage sustainable farming practices or securing investment for building local food processing facilities.

A great example is the Tax Incentives the Nigerian Government introduced in 2022 to scale the purchase and use of solar renewable energy products, this in turn is a positive shift to create an environment to allow sustainable transition into the Green Energy economy.

These are the actions that create the foundation upon which a resilient food system can be built.

Components of Systems Leadership

At Wasafiri, our Systemcraft approach offers a comprehensive framework for this transformation, centred on five core components that are essential for driving systemic change in food systems.

Vision setting: Defining clear, achievable goals (Set the direction)

A shared vision among stakeholders is essential. Clear, achievable outcomes that everyone can work towards will guide the creation of specific initiatives. It’s about setting a direction that everyone can follow, with clear milestones to track progress.

The Malabo Declaration of 2014 was a pivotal Vision Setting strategy that was adopted by the AU Assembly Heads of State and Government in 2014 and still provides the direction for Africa’s agricultural transformation for the period 2015 – 2025.

Windows of opportunity: Meeting you where it matters most (Make it matter)

A systems leader will leverage windows of opportunity that matter the most to stakeholders in the system.

An opportunity can arise for instance, when there’s a shift in public opinion, a new policy proposal, or a crisis that brings food issues to the forefront. A systems leader will spot the opportunity and be ready to act.

An example of this is how the French Revolution of 1789, was sparked by an unexpected window of opportunity, when King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette living in extreme extravagance and nobility increased grain taxes that led to bread being too expensive. This sparked the revolution that the people exploited.

Ecosystem building: Creating networks that work (Organise for collaboration)

Building the networks and ecosystems that support ongoing collaboration and innovation will create an ecosystem for change. It’s about organising the right people, tools, and information to ensure that the food system functions smoothly and efficiently.

These networks can serve the sole purpose of creating a flow of information amongst stakeholders or more action-oriented networks striving for change at a systems level.

For example, setting up regular meetings between local farmers, policymakers, Market Owners or Associations and Buyers of produce, to discuss supply chain challenges or creating a digital platform where stakeholders can share resources and ideas.

Building incentive models: Aligning interests for change (Change the incentives)

For real, lasting change to happen, stakeholders need the right incentives. This could mean working with local governments to introduce tax breaks for businesses that reduce their food waste or creating financial incentives for farmers to adopt regenerative practices.

These incentive models help align the interests of different stakeholders, making it easier to achieve widespread buy-in and participation.

By addressing what motivates people—whether it’s financial gain, community recognition, or environmental stewardship—you can drive significant changes in behaviour.

Addressing Knowledge Asymmetry: Sharing information where it’s needed (Harness collective intelligence)

Finally, food systems leadership is about making sure that all stakeholders have access to the knowledge and information they need to make informed decisions.

This could mean creating educational programs for farmers on sustainable practices, setting up data-sharing platforms that track food supply chain efficiency, or organising workshops that teach consumers about the benefits of buying local.

Ensuring that knowledge flows freely and effectively among everyone involved could bridge gaps that can otherwise hinder progress.

Conclusion

Food systems leadership is not an abstract concept; it’s a hands-on, practical approach to transforming our food systems for the better. It moves beyond isolated interventions, focusing instead on the underlying conditions and collective actions needed to create lasting change – and in that sense, it is applicable to systems leadership when tackling any complex social issue.

By focusing on these practical aspects, we can drive the real, measurable change needed to build a more sustainable, equitable, and resilient food system for all.

Learn more

Are you interested in understanding how you can use Systemcraft to work out a complex problem you’re working on? Check out our Systemcraft Essentials course.

Brenda Mareri is a Senior Manager for Food at Wasfiri Consulting. Connect with her on LinkedIn.



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September 2, 2024 /1 Comment/by
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Rethinking our leadership approach to tackle complex food systems issues

Rethinking our leadership approach to tackle complex food systems issues

Brenda Mareri

Brenda Mareri

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In 2017, millions of farmers in East Africa faced a devastating drought and a new threat; the fall armyworm. The pest devastated maize and wheat producing regions in South and Central Rift Valley regions of Kenya.

The pest spread rapidly, it was unresponsive to traditional pesticides and worst of all, had devastating effects on farmers’ crops. Extension service providers were deployed, intervention strategies by governments were formulated but still, the problem prevailed.

To begin addressing the challenges we face in our food systems we must first acknowledge that we are tackling a complex problem. Complex problems have no single owner, no single root cause, they are dynamic, constantly adapting, and the system is in fact working for some people, somewhere, some of the time.

Transformational change is required to tackle the challenges we face in addressing the complexities our food systems. This entails various shifts across multiple components, leading to changes in the system.

Transformational change requires systems thinking and systems leadership. Systems leadership and thinking will allow our food systems leaders to acknowledge the interconnectivity and the relationships between different actors and the need for collective action.

Take for example the paradox of Climate and Nutrition and the unintended consequences on women. Empowering women to employ climate smart practices at farm level would have a positive effect on the environment and contribute to climate change mitigation.

The unintended consequence would subsequently be the increase in women’s labour and workload needed to adopt climate smart practices which takes away from their child caring capacities affecting their children’s nutrition. To address such a paradox, a systems thinking approach is required.

There is a great need for leaders in the food systems space to think and act systemically. Food systems leaders can apply a systemic approach to solving problems by applying Systemcraft. This framework applies five dimensions for action which work on underlying system conditions.

Applying the five dimensions of Systemcraft

  1. The first is to Organise for Collaboration since no single person or institution can make change alone. A great example of this is the African Food Fellowship which is a community and a network of practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and influencers across the food system in Kenya and Rwanda working jointly across different capacities such as aquaculture, sustainable land use, and agri-finance to transform food systems.
  2. Second is to Set the Direction. Transforming food systems needs big ambitions to mobilise resources. An example of this is Rwanda’s ‘First 1,000 Days’ health campaign of 2017 which aimed to eradicate child malnutrition. The ambition was big enough to rally support towards developing strategies to attain the end goal.
  3. Third is to Make it Matter. Change can be hard and so the issue must matter to those that need to do the changing. Due to the great significance of livestock (both socially and economically) to several communities in Africa, we have seen governments actively invest in developing the Livestock Development Strategy for Africa to increase the sustainability and resilience of the sector.
  4. Number four is to Change the Incentives. As individuals, we all make decisions that make sense to us – whether it is what food to eat or what job we do. For example, in Malawi, the 2006 Farmer Input Subsidy Program aimed to incentivise resource-poor smallholder farmers to reinvest in maize production by accessing improved agricultural farm inputs against a background of bad weather causing poor yields. This attracted farmers back into maize production.
  5. Lastly is to Harness Collective Intelligence. A system best serves those with the most information. Asymmetries of power in how information flows create a broken system. The 2021, Lead Mothers program in Uganda is a great example of this. Due to the lack of nutrition information on maternal health, a group of women called lead mothers were trained on good agronomic practices, and nutritional benefits of consuming biofortified crops and they became community-based information hubs which in turn holistically increased the community’s understanding of the importance of nutrition.

These dimensions of action can be applied in any order by any food system leader. When it comes to systems, changing what is right, and what is possible, are not the same thing.

It is not enough to simply understand the problems we are facing in our food systems and have some great ideas to shift them. We also must understand the wider context in which we are trying to create change and prompt our leaders to think and act systematically.

This was first presented by Brenda Mareri at TedX AGRF 2023, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

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October 3, 2023 by
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AGRF 2023: Time for Food System Leadership

AGRF 2023: Time for Food System Leadership

Brenda Mareri &
Claudia Piacenza

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A leadership gap is limiting the transformation of Africa’s food system

We (Team Wasafiri’s Claudia & Brenda) have just returned from the Africa Food Systems Forum (AGRF) 2023 in Dar es Salaam Tanzania, where we had an incredible week connecting with food system actors on the continent.

It was exciting to see that it is now mainstream to talk about food as a system; that we collectively have moved beyond agriculture production as the only issue that matters.

Taking a system view isn’t just a matter of being more in vogue or with the zeitgeist, but has a real-world practical impact on the way we understand the complexities of food. It is through a systems view that we can understand, for example, the impact of empowering women (who are the majority of the worlds’ farmers) to employ climate are the real word complexities of food systems and just focusing on one dimension – such as increased production, increased incomes, or climate adaptation may make action feel reassuringly achievable but is a mirage in terms of real transformation.

Brenda & Claudia at AGRF 2023
Wasafiri's Brenda Mareri and Claudia Piacenza at AGRF 2023

We were also pleasantly surprised to see that soil health is no longer a topic only for geeky soil scientists in a corner, but the subject of several conversations that focus on the “how” rather than the “why”.

Smallholder farmers were acknowledged, mentioned, and celebrated as the backbone of the industry but not yet seen and served as the main clients of that industry. How do we move from smallholders as ‘beneficiaries’ of well-meaning interventions designed to ameliorate the impacts of an industrial food system that is built to serve large scale producers – and into the place where smallerholders hold more of the power within food systems?

Chefs from all over the world united their creative minds and sapient hands to elevate “poor” ingredients like beans to demonstrate that healthy diets do not have to be affordable only for middle-class, urban consumers.

And yet despite this great breadth of knowledge, creativity, inspiration and expertise, we are still dealing with incredibly stubborn problems as the Africa Agriculture Status Report reminds us. Why is that?

A big part of the answer lies in the need for a different kind of leadership. Systemic leadership was lacking at the AGRF. We saw a large showcase of good intentions but very little sense-making and collaboration at a level that can truly advance systemic change. Food System transformation requires a deep appreciation of the interconnections not just between the people that produce, process, transport, sell and consume food but also the relationship to the natural world that is the genesis of it all. No one leader, institution, company, or government, however well-intentioned and well-resourced is going to be able to transform a food system alone. It just can’t be done. Collective action is the only form of action that is going to work – and this needs network-driven forms of leadership where collaboration is not an optional activity but the default mode.

Finally, we have a serious problem with the representational status of African rulers who are often over 60, while the average African is 20 years old. And we still do not have enough women leaders with access to the power they need and deserve to nurture collective change at scale. We need to talk about it and support a new generation of African leaders for Food Systems.

The African Food Fellowship is investing in African Food System leaders in Kenya and Rwanda. We are starting to see how leaders can transform food systems in their countries towards more equitable, sustainable, and healthy outcome. Reach out if you want to know more!

If you enjoyed this blog then try this one about speeding up Food System Transformation 



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September 17, 2023 by