The year 2021 marks the beginning of the Decade of Action and calls for the acceleration of action towards addressing the world’s most pressing challenges. Urban food insecurity remains a critical challenge that demands attention. Therefore, to address this, the creation of active spaces to facilitate cooperation and action is extremely crucial.

As part of efforts to mobilise local government actors and local food systems stakeholders,  FAO, ICLEI Africa and partners are holding the 2021 African City Food Exchange, which will convene city-level dialogues for 16 cities by May 2021 as well as the city-to-city showcases and learning exchanges between July and September 2021. The 2021 African City Food Exchange aims to accelerate the achievement of  sustainable and resilient food systems through two key phases:

 

Phase 1: UN Food Systems Dialogues

Elevating the voices of African cities towards the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS). The dialogues will be conducted from April to mid May 2021 and are about building consensus around local food system challenges, opportunities and highlighting city-level initiatives that could be raised as part of national, regional and global UNFSS processes. These will be conducted in 16 African cities:

• Accra and Tamale in Ghana
• Arusha and Dodoma in Tanzania
• Cape Town in South Africa
• Kigali and Rulindo in Rwanda
• Kisumu and Nairobi in Kenya
• Lilongwe in Malawi
• Kaffrine, Kounghel and Sangalkam in Senegal
• Quelimane in Mozambique
• Tunis in Tunisia

 

The objectives of the dialogues are as follows:

• To highlight the role that local governments and urban food system stakeholders are playing in improving their urban food systems, identify key food systems challenges, opportunities and priorities.
• To generate discussions, action and commitments from local governments on food systems reforms to achieve the SDGS and the health and wellbeing of people and the planet.
• To connect these dialogues with the national UNFSS Member States Summit Dialogues as well as the summit’s independent dialogues
• To achieve a lasting collaboration on urban food systems and bring together key stakeholders to continuously support and elevate the voices of cities in regional and international fora.

 

Phase 2: City-to-City Exchange through the #AfricanCITYFOODMonth

The City-to –city exchange will allow for peer-to-peer learning between cities with the aim of contributing towards building greater institutional and human capacity required to accelerate progress towards resilient and nutritious urban food systems. Using the ICLEI-RUAF #AfricanCITYFOODMonth platform in July 2021, the City-to-City Exchange Africa will bring together local government officials, civil society organisations, national government officials, researchers, non-profit organisations, funders, among other key stakeholders, with the aim of:

• Accelerating the transfer of knowledge and experience from one or more cities or organisations, to one or numerous others
• Fostering the joint creation of new knowledge, sharing experiences and brainstorming on challenges in cities, in turn empowering local governments as well as creating a collective voice from city-region food actors
• Reinforcing the CITYFOOD network by stimulating active participation of policy makers, practitioners, the private sector, NGOs and citizens, paving a way for development of beneficial approaches and multi stakeholder partnerships
• Providing opportunities to leverage and aggregate resources for joint activities (e.g. research programs) and a unified voice of city actors towards regional and global fora

 

Project locations: African Cities

Duration: Jan – Dec 2021