Explore Official Dialogue Feedback

• UNFSS dialogues process should be inclusive and promote the active participation of women and in particular women’s groups representatives. • Gender is a cross cutting issue in all the SDGs and there is need to give it prominence across sectors to make sure women are not left behind. • Gender disaggregated data will facilitate not only the understanding of actual issues women face but would also be very useful to direct attention and efforts into areas that require support. • Mainstream women participation in financial institutions and facilitate women’s access to the finance by ... Read morecommunicating gaps and opportunities. • Schools are important entry points to nutrition education and girls/ women’s education is key notwithstanding the region or area in the world. • Malnutrition at birth, due to lack of nutrient reserve of the mother (that is already developed in adolescence) is very difficult to correct. So, timely interventions are key and increasing focus on adolescent women is welcomed. Adolescent age is a key window of opportunity to intervene timely to ensure a healthy pregnancy and good infant health outcome that will last until later in life. • Getting the voices of SMEs and women entrepreneurs into the dialogues, especially the country-level dialogues, within the process of the UNFSS is critical. Read less

• Entrepreneurship Training Mentorship and coaching through programs such as bootcamps (e.g. Goldman and Sachs training for women; Erasmus program for entrepreneurs) provide an opportunity for women to learn business skills as well as interact and network with other women entrepreneurs, encouraging and creating a community of practice. Such models should be supported and replicated to allow more women to benefit from the coaching and mentorship. Trainings also need to bring men on board to expose them to the challenges that women face and promote a culture of understanding and break down bar... Read moreriers. Government initiatives should make it compulsory for academic institutions (universities, ag extension services) to offer women-specific training for farmers, students and business owners. Private sector members such as the PSM should make commitments to do voluntary training in their areas of interest. Follow up action should include creation of a portfolio of evidence and action, to encourage peer learning, share lessons learned and scale up. A mechanism to make it easier to access the examples, peer learnings and KPIs are required. Read less

• Access to Market and Value-addition Promote the establishment of women cooperatives which could help with market access. Small scale farmers produce smaller quantities, cooperatives can play a critical role in helping small-scale farmers to bundle their produce together. Trade facilitation approaches need to be examined from a gender perspective, reducing trade barriers will have positive impact on women. Tariff escalation keeps developing countries from participating in global supply chains. This keeps women producers from entering the marketplace. Support coaching and training to increas... Read moree effectiveness of women’s engagement in production and along the food chain. In some countries and for specific products, women are important in agricultural production, unfortunately women are less represented further along the value chain. Read less

• Financial Services Policies to encourage gender representation in financial services should be adaptive in nature, promote innovation and provide overall direction, capture data and provide a method of evaluation of results. There is need to identify non-tradition assets that can be used as collateral as well as working with communities and financial service providers to ensure that they open women’s ownership of assets. Tools and infrastructure to aid access to financial services should be scaled to reach more women. These include digital savings, digital financial platforms emphasizing... Read more women inclusion and payments for environmental services schemes through direct mobile payments. Education programs need to target both financial providers and recipients. Farmers need to understand the financial services business as much as financial services providers understand theirs. Read less

• Agricultural extension Extension is top priority for elevating women. Communication of existing policies, programs and opportunities in easy, understandable language and in clear messages to women farmers is important. Improved roads into every village will go a long way in ensuring women farmers have access to markets and services so that they are to sell their agriculture products and to buy much needed production inputs. Gather and standardize gender disaggregated data (sex, age, all categories) so that there is objective and scientific information to work with. Women should be encourag... Read moreed to transfer technology and know-how among themselves. For example, the Global Farmer Network has a ‘No Till Strategy’ that has farmers working with fellow farmers to transfer knowledge and skills. Read less

• Education Programs Facilitate girls’ access to go to and stay in school and promote continuing education and vocational training. Girls’ education from an early age is particularly important in addition to women’s education. Formalized mentorship and educational programs for girls tied to other social engagements such as sports and health. These have potential to build confidence and agency. Multi-stakeholder networking platforms should be established to facilitate the sharing of experiences and knowledge. Other actors (e.g., private sector/business) should be included as an opportun... Read moreity for mentorship and promoting shared experiences/ career knowledge. Read less

• Women’s movement and agency Partnerships are key in creating more spaces for women’s representations. There is need to create a collective agenda that integrates smaller movements and unifies them into larger ones. Local, national and internal women’s movements need to be strengthened to integrate food and farming issues and the role of women in agriculture. Women’s movements have a role to play in ensuring accountability of different actors, especially in higher levels e.g. companies, policy makers, regulatory authorities and in unlocking opportunities for women.

• Nutrition in the first 1000 days Promote high-quality protein foods to improve health outcomes in the first 1000 days. This can be done by improving women’s access to and control over livestock by women. With the focus on women, there is much higher likelihood that this protein nutrition will also reach the rest of the family. School meals and school nutrition programs can be powerful for children to gain early knowledge on nutrition and health, knowledge that also trickles down to families. Partnerships and collaborations between companies and trusted local NGOs should be stimulated to ... Read morework on programs related to the theme of adolescent nutrition and nutrition for the first 1000 days, while acknowledging the sensitivities around the topic related to marketing of infant foods. Public Health and nutrition education (also using local knowledge) should include educating men on the importance of adolescent, maternal and child nutrition, and also on available maternal services. Read less

• Proper maternal services Lack of effective maternal health care services can undermine progress on broader human development. Well-designed cash transfer programmes that aim to be sustainable and have adequate resourcing can improve maternal health. Complementary awareness raising activities are critical for changing behaviour and attitudes at individual, household and community levels. Countries should invest in better education, more health workers, nutritional services and messaging for vulnerable groups. For example, Village Nutrition Volunteers - conduct community nutrition activities... Read more and nutrition education; help establish home or community vegetable gardens; formulate village nutrition action plan; prepare master list of wasted, stunted, under- and over-nourished children, pregnant and lactating mothers. Cash transfer program – there are good examples of cash transfer programmes that can be scaled up. For example, in the Philippines, women receive monetary support of 500 pesos (10 USD) per month per household and 300 pesos per school child. Beneficiaries must fulfill two conditions: 1) pregnant women have access to pre- and post-natal care and be attended during childbirth by a trained professional; 2) Parents must attend family development sessions which include topics on responsible parenting, health and nutrition. Read less

• Leadership and Women’s Voices Socialize the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women that asserts that all women have a right to hold political offices, own property among a host of other recommendations. Institutions should commit to gender-based targets for leadership positions in the same way the UN requires meeting nationality quotas. The inclusion of women, especially young women in key discussions at global level policy platforms such as the CFS and the UNFCCC is critical. Women and men in leadership positions should be intentional about mentoring ... Read morewomen and respecting their contributions. This calls for men to stand up for women, as with the example of “Sofagate” at the EU Council. Read less

• Human Rights Gender is a cross-cutting of issue and should therefore be addressed as such. Women’s issues should not be dealt with in isolation. Policies must be gender-sensitive policies and allow women to have access and control of resources. They should be developed using transformative approaches that allow for the engagement of all stakeholders at a community level where gender norms are deeply entrenched. The role of the private sector needs to be recognized and leveraged to advance women’s empowerment.

The UNFSS draft game changing solutions has some major gender gaps which should be addressed urgently. The process will benefit from the inclusion of women as special ambassadors in the action tracks to strengthen the gender elements in the game changers. • Human Rights Access and control are local problems but require global tools to help women’s voices to be heard. Overcoming deeply entrenched systems will require creating channels for dialogue, not for women to just speak but men to be trained to listen, to be fair partners and ‘champions of enlightenment’. Localised dialogues with ... Read morewomen in their communities are needed so as to create coherence and to ensure that the discussions are transformed into action and policy. It is also important to understand what empowerment means in different communities. Local engagement is required to understand local perceptions. • Leadership and Women’s Voices There is need to continue creating more opportunities and spaces for women to be represented in leadership positions. Current initiatives must be scaled and encouraged and to bring more women on board. There is need to promote the implementation of existing laws and conventions, such as the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, UN Commitment to end child marriage by 2030. Institutions need to commit to setting gender-based targets, including quotas in boardrooms and organizational hierarchy and in hiring of personnel. • Proper Maternal Services Over half a million women die annually due to maternity complications. Therefore there is need to understand the linkages between women's empowerment, decision making power and maternal health care. Better information and messaging for vulnerable groups is required. Better investment, better education, more health workers and nutritional services are needed to cover these vulnerable populations. A system approach that involves schools and educational departments can help integrate maternal health education into curriculums. • Nutrition for the first 1000 days A mother’s nutrition during pregnancy and the nutrition a child receives in the first two years of life are vitally important influences in determining good health both now and into the future. These first 1000 days of life set us up for good health across our lives. Public health and nutrition education (also using local knowledge) should be incorporated into school feeding programmes which are also a point of entry into communities. There is need to stimulate and increase public private partnership for collaborations to improve nutrition & health. • Women’s Movements and Agency Women’s movements must be all encompassing ensuring women from all walks of life actively participate, from the small-scale farmer to the CEO. There is need to create a collective agenda that integrates smaller movements and unifies them into larger ones. More spaces to demonstrate the importance of women roles need to be created. Policy decisions and regulatory frameworks need to lock in legal protections for women for land tenure, access to capital, and health and nutrition of women and infants. • Education Programs Training and education have to be part of all identified solutions and embedded in other areas. Too often, solutions and financing are delivered without training and skills building. There is need for training platforms on multiple topics including for technical/home management and income generating projects without gender barriers/attribution. New approaches are needed to ensure education programs address the needs and priorities of both men and women across value chains. Governments need to dedicate budgets to enable women’s access to education and rights. • Agricultural extension Agricultural extension services have not attached much importance to reaching women farmers or women on the farm. There is a lack of data that effectively informs who, what, and where things have to be done. In addition, there is lack of communication to transfer knowledge, from scientific presentations into local languages and easy-to-understand language. There is need for holistic approaches that foster access to extension services by women. Private-public alliances that promote the extension of knowledge and new technologies to women must be fostered. Consideration should be given to who should approach women farmers, depending on country, customs, religious contexts. • Financial Services Real transformation in financial services will happen when gender becomes an integral part of the finance discussion rather than being a separate issue. There is need for governments, development partners and private financial institutions to relook and rework their policies to propel equitable financing for women farmers. These should range from assigning loans quotas for women, providing financial education to both recipients and providers of financial services providers, as well as providing the tools and infrastructure to make financial services accessible to women. Governments need to also create incentives for financial institutions by creating and providing co-financing systems. • Access to Market and Value-addition Gender smart programs require a holistic approach based on comprehensive ecosystem of global and local partners. There is need to have women representation along the entire value chain and not just at the production level. Women farmers must be supported to foster entrepreneurship in a holistic way, facilitate access to productive farming resources, information, technology, capacity... Read less

On May 13 2021, 129 leaders gathered in a virtual High Level Dialogue as a contribution to the cross-cutting theme of Gender in preparation for the Food Systems Summit. The need to address gender issues in a holistic manner that ensures all areas and issues affecting women in food systems are necessary to achieve transformation. For example, addressing the lack of access to finance does little if we do not concurrently address the challenges of tenure rights. Policy makers and stakeholders must work together in a coordinated approach to tackle these issues and ensure systemic change. Gender ha... Read mores been identified as a cross cutting lever of change for the Food Systems Summit. Communities of interest were grouped around the following areas during the dialogue: • Human rights • Leadership and women’s voices • Proper maternal services • Nutrition for the first 1000 days • Women’s movement and agency • Education programs • Agricultural extension • Financial services • Access to markets and value addition • Entrepreneurship training Some challenges explored include: • Scoping and identifying ways to solve problems related to gender that will lead to transformation in the food system • Actions required in the next three years to have the greatest impact on the different issues affecting gender • Measures of success of the required actions Key issues which kept resurfacing were: • Policies: Governments, organizations and financial institutions need to incorporate gender considerations into their existing policies. • Accountability: Beyond having policies and guidelines in place, governments, organizations and financial institutions must have accountability mechanisms in place to ensure these policies are implemented and adhered to. • Financing: Investment from both the public and private sector is required to ensure gender programs and initiatives are implemented at scale to reach more women. • Partnerships and collaboration: governments, private sector, communities and other stakeholders including men need to work together to address the issues affecting women. • Data and metrics: Identifying metrics for measurement for programs is important and will contribute to availability of data, measuring success, identifying problems and improving programs. Quality disaggregated data should be built into programs before developing metrics for programs. • Tools/Innovation: Programs and initiatives need to provide the necessary tools to enable access. This includes investing in digital tools and emerging ag technologies. Read less

The workshop was designed to be inclusive and participatory, with active engagement of participants through instruments of Chat box, Polling and Mentimeter contributions. Participants were invited to share thoughts, on Research and Innovation themes, topics or issues that they see as crucial for advancing the cause of Resilient Food Systems. There was, as expected, great diversity of views. These are clustered under five broad areas indicated below: a. The need to generate what a Common understanding of what Food Systems Resilience implies. This will include communication and the need for coor... Read moredination in capturing and disseminating information and data across all levels and geographies B. Indentification of drivers influencing resilience of Food Systems and sustainability. This should include Research and Innovation for contextual recommendations for ensuring the resilience of Food Systems and the importance of Trade-offs related to ensuring Food Systems Resilience. c. Identifying issues of vulnerabilities and losses. This should include environmental sustainability dimensions as well as local solutions based on cultural, social, and ecological systems. d. Local Food Systems and rights-based issues. This will include exploring local Food Systems solutions that are well-resourced, people-centered, ecologically sustainable and socially just. This also include a A rights-based approach emphasizes that those most affected by food insecurity should not only be able to participate meaningfully, but that governments must be accountable for these rights e. Other Areas of mention were 1)Gender issues in Food Systems resilience and 2) Balancing between food production, environmental conservation and management, and improving livelihoods. Read less

The breakout session which had four groups, gave opportunities to the participants to give their thoughts on two questions below: Q1: Do you think the subject of Food systems resilience is a suitable area to include in priority topics for the EU-AU Research and Innovation partnership on FNSSA in future? How is this important for a bi-continental platform? It was agreed that the concept is important to include. Food systems resilience is a quite recent concept in many Africa where the focus of research has tended to focus on agricultural productivity. There is much that African scholarship can ... Read morelearn from European research on this topic. At the same, there also much that European scholarship can learn from African research, as well as Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Africa. This includes • learning from local farming systems, as well as indigenous crops, species and practices. This will assist with issues of declining biodiversity on both continents, understanding how to build back better, and how to change existing food systems towards more desirable outcomes. • A further reason why this topic is important is that research in food systems is a form of foreign policy, especially since other regions are interested in the African food system, and this is not always to the benefit of the continent. • The final issue related to the importance of promoting inclusivity in both regions, and to closer inequalities in food systems outcomes, and in control over the food systems. This is both between Africa and the EU, as well as within countries in each region. • Pandemic such as COVID 19 has disrupted the food system in both EU/Africa hence need to build resilience • Conflicts are affecting Africa with negative ripple effects in EU due to migration. Food systems are not isolated and joint efforts is needed. Challenges: • Conceptual and terminological confusion/’opaqueness’ • Food Systems perspective not prevalent in existing policy documents • Need to incorporate ‘relevant’ concerns of governments for policy Suggestions: • Policy brief: with proposals for common and operational definitions of Food Systems and Resilience definitions • Re-phrasing of Roadmap (‘refinement’) • Focus on interconnections of African and EU food systems (‘manageability’) • Integrate value chain dynamics in a broader 3-dimensional understanding via FSs Economic, environmental, social Q2: How can Research and Innovation (Research and Innovation) contribute to identifying pathways to more resilient food systems? This is about what research questions/ topics/ areas should be addressed in a Europe-Africa FNSSA platform (or Partnership), and linkage to Policy making. Some areas for research include: • better understanding seasonality, both annual and decadal, research on underutilized crops and species, what products and concepts developed in Europe would fit best in Africa, and vice versa. • Research on informal economies in both regions. A theme was how to democratize science, making it available to all, being inclusive. • Research in the area of seed systems, nutrition are needed? • Intensification: What kind of technology (GAP) do we need to intensify to take care of the increasing population? • How can we intensify and protect the natural resources to help us find solution to provide diverse food to the poor? • Inclusiveness in policy formulation? • Need for transdisciplinary teams • Trade related research topics (addressing policy makers’ concerns) • Study around climate smart agriculture and seed policy to ensure ease of movement of seed across the two continents? • Biodiversity: to look at underutilized food crops in Africa. • Youth population is huge and how can they be included in the discuss? • Circular economy is another area to avoid food waste • Consumer psychology studies will be helpful to understand how consumer choose a product • How (according to which criteria) are credits availed to Producers or to Traders or other actors in the value chain? • Finally, farmer-led research, and research on agro-ecology. Read less

The findings from the dialogue shows that the role of science in improving Food Systems resilience is key for the UN Food Systems Action Track 5 on ‘Build resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stresses’. Other conclusions from the dialogue are also listed below: • One of the greatest contributions that the LEAP4FNSSA can bring onboard is bridging the science-policy interface. How can AU-EU Science influence policy in both continents • How do we form a coalition of scientists and policymakers especially within Africa where policymakers are still only asking about how to increase agr... Read moreiculture productivity instead of looking at how our Food Systems can deliver quality diets, good jobs, equitable livelihood within acceptable planetary boundaries for the population. Until the question change, the science-policy interface will remain an interface with frictions and lack common understanding. The EU-AU partnership LEAP4FNSSA will be key here. • Science needs to change in a way that supports the government to ask the right questions and invest in Food Systems in the face of competing needs like health, infrastructure among others. • There are dissenting voices in science that require harmonization. We need a science governance system that brings the best science on the table to support Food Systems transformation. • How do we keep food moving within countries when there are shocks? How does the African continental free trade area policy open trade among African countries and between Africa and Europe? What kind of question should be asked to ensure the free trade area supports the Food Systems’ resilience. We need data on the impact of trade on the Food Systems. How can we build the role of the local Food Systems within the region? In conclusion, participants were charged that, we do not only need sustainable, resilient, or healthy Food Systems, we need just and equitable Food Systems. Inclusion and equity should be key questions in the conceptualization of Food Systems. The study recommendation also include the integration of Food Systems Resilience in EU-AU partnership research agenda. This should include items such as: • Funding of trans-regional and transdisciplinary research • A platform for joint learning, such as on new challenges and emerging crises (e.g. COVID-19) • A better understanding of the interconnections between African and European Food Systems and joint response mechanisms • Include Resilience in the Research and Innovation partnership as a crosscutting theme. Read less

The mentimeter one-word analysis done shows the emphasis on three themes: Resilience, Sustainability and Participation, as core pillars in the concept and promotion of food systems resilience. The dialogue focused on the Action Track 5. The presentation was done in three segments. The first segment addressed the Conceptual Framework of Food Systems Resilience, including aspects of balancing synergies and trade-offs, as well as providing an analysis of methodological approaches used in Food Systems Resilience. This was followed with a segment addressing Resilience to Shocks and Stresses, includ... Read moreing policy implications of resilience in Food Systems. The COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on human health and global food security were used as a case study in this analysis. The third segment provided the Conclusions and Recommendations, emphasizing seven Guiding Principles that came out as essential for building Food Systems Resilience in the face of shocks and stresses. These principles were: i) Maintain diversity and redundancy, ii) Manage connectivity, iii) Manage slow variables and feedbacks, iv) Foster complex adaptive system thinking, v) Encourage learning, vi) Broaden participation, and vii) Promote polycentric governance systems. Read less