Food system transformation (FST) is fundamental to human progress. Feeding and nourishing the world. Creating jobs and reducing poverty. Managing the environment. Avoiding catastrophic climate change. Building resilience to shocks. These are the building blocks of human and planetary wellbeing.
In April 2025, we took part in the Act4Food Youth Leaders Workshop held in Arusha, Tanzania, a truly transformative experience that deepened our already strong convictions of the power and potential of young people to shape the future of our food systems. Organized by ACT4FOOD with support from the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), the workshop brought together 22 youth leaders from across the globe working under the ACT4FOOD banner, along with GAIN staff and additional food systems youth leaders from Tanzania.
Every year, unsafe food makes 600 million people sick and claims 420,000 lives – including 125,000 children under five (World Health Organization, 2015). These aren’t just numbers; they’re a call to action. At GAIN, we are using science and evidence to change this. For World Food Safety Day, we are spotlighting 10 ways we’ve advanced food safety over the past year.
In Tanzania, 85- 90% of the land is cultivated by smallholder farmers majority of whom face challenges in getting access to quality seeds and assured markets for their produce, thus limiting their capabilities to produce quality produce and generate steady income. Currently, 57% of pregnant women in Tanzania are anemic. Additionally, according to the Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey 2015 (TDHS), 58% of children under the age of 5 years in the country were anemic.
The number of adults living with diabetes has more than doubled over the span of 30 years, rising from 7% in 1990 to more than 14% in 2022.1 An estimated 828 million adults worldwide currently live with diabetes, and if trends continue, this is projected to reach 1.3 billion by 2050.2
A single presentation about workforce nutrition became the catalyst for a transformative partnership with Uganda’s office of the prime minister (OPM). When we first introduced the four pillars of workforce nutrition i.e. nutrition education, healthy food at work, breastfeeding support, and nutrition focused health checks, we could not have anticipated the impact it would have on the officials present. Their response was immediate and enthusiastic “This is exactly what we have been missing”.
Imagine a Kenya where vibrant urban markets overflow with indigenous greens, youth in peri-urban areas lead Agri-tech startups, and rural cooperatives thrive as they steward regenerative farming methods. This future was at the heart of a recent co-creation workshop in Kenya, uniting 35 food system leaders from Ministry of Agriculture, Glocolearning, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), SUN CSA and GAIN to chart pathways toward food systems diversification. Diversification has been widely identified as a strategy with great potential to build better resilience, nutrition, and equity across Kenya.
Fighting malnutrition in all its forms is one of the major challenges of the 21st century. While more than 820 million people suffer from undernutrition and hunger, with 150 million children under age 5 stunted (too short for their age), another 2 billion people are overweight or obese. With SMEs in Africa producing and distributing approximately 70%-80% of the nutritious foods available on the continent, they are key drivers of food supply, job creation and economic growth. How can they reach lower-income consumers and create sustainable nutrition impact?
