AI and the Food System – Food Indaba 2025

The 7th edition of the annual Food Indaba explores the potential impacts and opportunities of artificial intelligence on African food systems. While AI is already playing a role in creating efficiencies in food production, its potential for addressing systemic injustices and inequalities in African food systems has, by comparison, remained a marginal area of interest.

Food Surpluses, not Food Shortages
In South Africa and many other countries with high levels of food insecurity, we have food surpluses, not food shortages. Our formal agricultural sector has geared for export growth. This means that the promise of greater efficiency in food production via AI is largely irrelevant to food security – what is needed is greater equality in quality and distribution of food to those that most need it. How can AI help us create better urban planning, better distribution models and better access to quality food for all?

Working in collaboration with key partners, including the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security’s Innovation Labs, the Food Indaba 2025 seeks to explore these possibilities across a range of activities including conferences, masterclasses, cooking workshops, dining experiences, walking tours, urban farm tours and art exhibitions.

AI and a humane World?
Kurt Ackermann, CEO of the South African Urban Food and Farming Trust notes that “as the focus shifts toward the role of cities, and city planning, in addressing food security, AI could play a significant role in how the cities of the future – and by extension the food systems of the future – might better serve the needs of human beings. Conventional thinking about AI puts the technology at the centre of the discussion, whereas the creation of a more humane world – and how AI could help – is at the heart of Food Indaba 2025.”

Save these key dates:

• Wednesday 9 July – AI and Pan African Food Systems, online conference
• Thursday 10 July – Public Conversation Series: AI, urban planning and the future of food security
• Friday 11 July – Food Systems Masterclasses
• Saturday 12 and Saturday 19 July – Food Systems Walking Tours
• Saturday 12, Sunday 13, Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 July – Dialogues through Food, intimate dining events
• Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 July – The Science of Cooking: kids cooking workshop
• Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 July – Food and the Family: intergenerational food systems academy
• Saturday 12, Sunday 13, Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 July – High Tea Series at 16 on Lerotholi Art Gallery and other Cape Town cultural institutions
• Saturday 12, Sunday 13, Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 July – Tea with a Farmer at Oranjezicht City Farm and Lerotholi Food Garden
• Friday 18 July – AI and the Food System, in-person conference

Building on the success of Food Indaba 2024
The 2024 Food Indaba unpacked relationships between food, households and the economy, and raised challenging questions about how hunger is weaponised in armed conflict and normalised in ‘free and peaceful’ democracies. It also engaged in multifaceted ways with intergenerational connections through food, facilitated pan-African urban dialogues, and explored how the medium of food itself can bring us insight, connection and joy. With 18 events over 14 days spread from the V&A Waterfront to Mowbray and Salt River, Langa, Philippi and Stellenbosch, Food Indaba once again reached an audience of over 50 million with nearly 500 in-person attendees.

People and organisations wishing to join the engagement on the 2025 themes are welcome to connect at hello@foodindaba.org.