This white paper was commissioned by Partners in Food Solutions, SNV*, and GAIN and prepared with research,
technical, and drafting support from Earth Partners Ltd. The authoring organisations extend their sincere gratitude to the funders, partners, and food processors for their generous contribution in making this research possible.
The analysis reflects an independent synthesis of evidence and stakeholder perspectives and should not be interpreted as representing the official views, policies, or positions of the authoring organisations, their governing bodies, partners, or funders.
When we think about improving nutrition, our minds often jump to the dinner plate: the colourful vegetables, the lean proteins, the whole grains. We focus on consumer choices, dietary guidelines, and the individual responsibility to eat healthily. But what if the most critical decisions shaping our nutrition have already been made long before the food reaches our plate? What if the very food environments where we buy our food are the true starting point for a healthy diet?
This Inspirational Kongamano webinar brings together city and market actors who are actively working to build more just, sustainable, and resilient food systems — with a clear focus on improving access to healthy diets.
You’ll hear practical insights on:
Innovative approaches to market investment
Inclusive models for food systems governance
Strengthening nutrition capacity at city level
The session will also draw from lessons emerging from GAIN’s food systems governance programme and its partnerships for impact.
We’re joined by speakers from ICLEI World Secretariat, ICLEI Africa, Nutrition in City Ecosystems (NICE), GAIN, and other leading organisations working at the forefront of urban food systems transformation.
If you are working on, or interested in, how cities can better deliver healthy diets, this session offers grounded perspectives and real-world examples to learn from.
Transformation towards just and sustainable food systems is needed to ensure the health of people and the planet. Current large-scale industrial agri-food systems practices across an increasingly urbanised system are increasing soil degradation. These practices, alongside intersecting environmental challenges and widening socio-economic inequalities, are negatively impacting food security and access to healthy diets and increasing interest in climate-smart, agroecological, and regenerative food production. Cities are dynamic places of human settlement where food systems innovation can be catalysed. This makes them key to food policy and delivering nourishing, just and sustainable food systems. In 2024-5, the Transforming Urban Rural Food Systems (TURFS) Consortium conducted a mixed-methods exploratory inquiry in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to explore how cities can incentivise regenerative agricultural transitions.
Good Nature Agro (GNA), a Zambia-based enterprise with presence in Malawi and South Africa, produces high-quality groundnut and bean seeds and commodities, distributed across Southern and Central Africa, including Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Namibia. Founded in 2014, GNA has supported over 20,000 smallholder farmers this season with seeds, training and market access to improve incomes and livelihoods.
From its early years, GNA set a target of 40% female farmer representation and invested in key programs to improve female farmers’ experience. Initiatives included co-farmer registration for digital payments, family financial literacy training, pre-harvest payments and loans, asset financing, and gender training for all field staff. These efforts created measurable impacts on productivity and strengthened women’s engagement in high-value markets. Recent surveys confirmed that female farmers continue to experience increased production efficiency and have a positive experience with GNA, reflected in a 60 Decibels net promoter score of 57 (the likelihood of farmers recommending GNA to others, on a scale from -100 to +100).
Many adults spend most of their waking hours in the workplace, making it an important—yet underappreciated—leverage point for change. In the context of food systems, workplaces can contribute to significantly improved nutrition through employer-provided nutrition programmes (also known as ‘workforce nutrition programmes’ (WFN)). However, the process of gaining support for these initiatives and the potential for institutionalising them within policy remain underexamined. This case study aims to address this by examining the development of WFN in Bangladesh, including at the factory level and through the government-led National Workforce Nutrition Alliance (NWNA). It also considers opportunities for integrating nutrition considerations into occupational safety and health (OSH) policies, regulations, and practices in Bangladesh.
Agriculture remains a strong driver of livelihoods and economic growth in Asia and the Pacific. However, the region’s food systems are increasingly vulnerable to floods, droughts, heat stress, glacier melt, land degradation, and biodiversity loss. The Asia and the Pacific face a converging crisis of climate change, eroding natural capital, and rising food & water insecurity.
Many adults spend most of their waking hours at the workplace, making the latter a strategic, yet underappreciated, environment for health and well-being interventions. Evidence shows that workforce nutrition initiatives can improve workers’ health and well-being as well as business outcomes, yet their full potential as occupational and public health interventions remain underexplored. This paper examines the extent to which collective bargaining agreements globally include clauses on workforce nutrition, operationalised as healthy food at work, breastfeeding support, nutrition-focused health checks and follow-up, and nutrition education. Using web-based and bibliographic searches, the study identified open-access global, national, and sector-specific collective bargaining agreement (CBA) repositories. It analysed 26,015 agreements from the WageIndicator CBA database (global coverage), Légifrance (France), and the Office of Personnel Management (US) databases. Explicit references to workforce nutrition were rare.
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ESA countries began implementing food fortification in the 1990s, starting with salt iodization and gradually expanding to include additional food vehicles. Today, of the 26 countries covered, 21 countries have mandatory fortification of salt, 13 of wheat flour, 10 of edible oil and maize flour, and 5 of sugar.Despite this progress, micronutrient deficiencies remain widespread across Eastern and Southern Africa, with persistently high levels of iron, vitamin A, zinc, folate, and iodine deficiencies.
