Visioning Zambia’s food systems, a homecoming through Collective Action
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Supporting non-state actors in Zambia to co-create a shared vision for their food systems has been both a homecoming and a deep learning journey for me. Working with civil society, young farmers, business, and government, through a nationally convened process led by the National Food and Nutrition Commission (NFNC) and supported by GIZ, we set out to see the whole system together and ignite long-term, inclusive change.
Why this work matters to me
Zambia is my home country. I grew up and was educated there, supported by public resources, before life and work took me elsewhere. Living far from home comes with a certain guilt: the knowledge that the opportunities and security enjoyed abroad impose a subtle burden, acting as a constant reminder of the contribution one owes to the community back home.
When the opportunity came to support non-state actors to develop a compelling vision for Zambia’s food systems, it immediately resonated with both my professional practice in systems transformation and my personal responsibility. The task was to help civil society, private sector and other non-state actors clarify where they want Zambia’s food systems to go, in a way that speaks to everyone who cares about food as the foundation of well-being, livelihoods, and the environment.
Food is a powerful lens. If you want to understand an economy, a community, or a country’s possible future, you can follow the life of food. From preparing the soil, to planting, harvesting, transporting, processing, and consuming. When you look closely in Zambia, you see that a huge proportion of people’s income and survival is tied to the soil and to food-related activities, especially for women and, more recently, young people.
Seeing the whole food system
One of the first things that struck me in this work was how much knowledge already exists in Zambia. The people gathered, from civil society organisations, local authorities, small and medium businesses, transporters, academics, and others. They held rich insights about food, the environment, and collaboration. In many ways, they were living libraries of experience.
Yet their perspectives were often fragmented, each focusing on a specific part of the system. Farmers may focus on inputs, yields, and markets without always connecting this to policy or to the health of the soil. Processors may focus on the raw materials coming through the gate, not on how the soil was treated or what kinds of seeds were used. Policymakers may work on regulations and subsidies without fully hearing how these land in the daily lives of smallholders or transporters. This kind of siloed thinking is common in many sectors and countries, but in food systems, it can be particularly costly.
Our work, therefore, needed to help people see the whole. Wasafiri’s Systemcraft approach and Ubuntu philosophy became a practical way of widening awareness and connecting the dots. The aim was to enable participants see how their individual actions sit within a wider web of relationships that include soil health, climate, livelihoods, gender dynamics, and cultural attitudes to food.
Why gender and youth sit at the centre
Any serious conversation about Africa’s food systems must put gender and youth at the centre.
Most Zambians who derive their livelihoods from the land and from food-related activities are women. Much of this labour does not show up as formal “employment”, yet it is the backbone of household survival. Women till the land, plant, weed, harvest, process, cook, sell, and feed families. When we talk about food systems, we are therefore talking about women’s economic agency and gender equality in very concrete terms.
If we care about the economic emancipation of women and girls, we must look closely at the food system cycle: who controls land, who decides what is planted, who has access to finance and other inputs, whose labour is recognised, and who benefits from value addition. These are not abstract questions; they shape daily life.
The same is true for young people. It has been inspiring to see the passion of young farmers who are imagining a future different from that of older generations and who are taking up farming as a deliberate choice.
At the same time, urban youth can face stigma when they stay connected to traditional foods. For a child, eating imported fast food can be seen as “modern” while bringing sweet potatoes or pumpkin to school for lunch can mark you as “from the village”. This reveals how culture and identity intersect with food choices and health.
By placing gender and youth at the heart of the visioning process, the work in Zambia has tried to surface these dynamics rather than treat them as side issues. Food connects directly to health, education, and opportunity.
What children eat affects whether they are alert in class or weighed down and sleepy. What women can earn from food-related activities affects whether girls stay in school.
Making collaboration real
From the outset, we knew that complex issues such as food systems do not respond to heroic individuals, no matter how knowledgeable they might be.
These issues respond to collective action. So, the design of the process—which involved all key stakeholders–was itself an expression of the kind of collaboration we wanted to see in the system.
Rather than a typical “expert at the front, audience listening” workshop, everyone present was treated as an expert. The condition for being invited was not a job title, but a real stake and experience in food systems.
We explicitly distinguished between debate and dialogue. In debate, each person defends their position. In dialogue, we listen in ways that allow our own views to shift because we are open to new information or perspectives emerging.
To make this real, we used methods that went beyond talking. When participants mapped Zambia’s food systems, we did not only hand out flipcharts and markers. We brought out what you might normally find in a kindergarten: coloured clay, pipe cleaners, and other simple materials.
People built three-dimensional models of the system as they saw it, moving pieces around, adding connections, and making the invisible visible. It was playful on the surface, but very serious underneath.
Seeing food systems in 3D helped participants notice relationships, feedback loops, and the gaps that would have remained hidden on a flat page.
We also recognised that the people in the room could not fully represent the diversity of stakeholders. So, we embedded “sensing journeys” into the process. Over a period of weeks, participants went out to listen to others: traditional leaders who are custodians of land, young people, businesses of different sizes, government officials, and community members. These were not extractive interviews. They were an intentional widening of the circle of voices shaping the emerging vision.
Part of the process included engaging with the participants online. Connectivity and cost of data were real challenges. Not everyone could join every online session, and sometimes voices dropped mid-sentence.
Meeting in nature, close to soil and crops, was far more inspiring than meeting in a high-rise in the capital city, but budget constraints meant we could not always choose the ideal environment. Still, people found ways to keep learning together, including through informal channels to share what they were sensing on the ground.
From shared vision to long-term transformation
The culmination of this journey was the co-creation of a shared vision for Zambia’s food systems: Happy earth. Healthy food. Thriving Zambia — across generations.
Participants were proud of what they produced. “The visioning process was a game-changer for us! We are now using the visioning methodology when working with our youth and other stakeholders. The approach has really helped improve generative listening and how we are implementing food systems transformation as an organisation”, said a participant from a youth-focused organisation.
In small, diverse groups made up of farmers, programme implementers, processors, advocates, and others, they drafted different versions of the vision. These drafts were then displayed and reviewed in silence, allowing everyone to absorb and reflect before speaking.
We then invited a small group of “self-appointed adults” from among the participants to take on the responsibility of synthesising these drafts into a single vision.
The group worked iteratively: crafting, sharing back to the wider group, receiving feedback, and refining. Even at the “graduation” meeting, they remained open to further adjustment. This was what we had envisioned.
This process built two critical capacities. First, the capacity to work with others across differences in power, sectors, and perspectives. Participants experienced directly that transforming a system requires collaboration between government, business, civil society, young farmers, and many others.
Second, the capacity to experiment with practical tools and methods such as stakeholder dialogues, sensing journeys, silence, 3D mapping, and coaching circles to generate new thinking and, more importantly, action.
A vision, however, is only a starting point. Real change will come through cycles of experimentation… what engineers call prototyping.
The next phase, in my view, is for different actors to run concrete experiments at various points in the food system: from regenerative soil practices, to reducing post-harvest losses, to rethinking transport, to reviving traditional crops and seeds, to innovative ways of handling so-called “waste” so it enriches rather than depletes ecosystems.
These prototypes, tested, refined, and scaled over time, are what will gradually align Zambia’s food systems with the vision that has been collectively crafted.
Transformation happens through trial and error, through learning by doing, not through ideas alone.
