Food Indaba: 22 July – 4 August 2024
First hosted above a Cape Town coffee shop in 2014, the Food Dialogues has since grown to become a signature annual programme of events drawing hundreds in person every year to workshops, conferences, walking tours, arts exhibitions, and cooking and eating experiences, while engaging nearly 100 000 digitally and reaching more than 50 million through media in 2023 alone. This event programme is now called the Food Indaba. While the vision of “fostering a food system that is more healthy, resilient, and just” remains unchanged, the new name recognises that the scope of the event has grown to include more than dialogue, providing a platform and opportunity for gathering and engagement in diverse formats across a wide range of communities and geographies.
The theme of the 2024 programme, running from 22 July – 4 August, will be business and the food economy, encompassing the formal and informal sectors; emerging opportunities and innovations; regulations, governance, and power dynamics; and matchmaking between producers and restaurants, retailers and non-traditional channels like farmer’s markets, food buying clubs and more. How can chefs source local and traditional ingredients? What risks and opportunities do local and international tourists represent for food businesses? How can consumers make good choices when accounting for nutrition, ethics, and environmental concerns? How consolidated is our food economy, what difference does it make, and can or should anything be done about it? What is the impact of organic waste diversion regulations and the growing emphasis on circular business models? The programme will provide opportunities to engage with diverse experts and leading thinkers on these and many other related important questions.
According to organiser Kurt Ackermann, CEO of the SA Urban Food & Farming Trust, our food system remains under tremendous stress even in the years after the Covid-19 pandemic as the impact of the war in Ukraine ripples out from increased prices of wheat, cooking oil and other staples, followed by scarcity of fertilisers which is now slashing yields from farms across the world. Food is more scarce and more expensive nearly everywhere, including in South Africa.
“Our food economy is being forced to change thanks to its integration with the global food system,” explains Ackermann. “Our local food system needs to adapt, become more circular in nature, and look to innovators who can help us build resilience. Other factors are driving the need for change simultaneously, such as industry consolidation, the climate crisis, worsening public health indicators, and others. There is risk but also great opportunity in this time of change, and the Food Indaba will take a deep dive into these issues with leading thinkers, policy makers, community leaders and entrepreneurs.”
2024 will also see a focus on older persons and the food system, looking at diet and nutrition, preferences, behaviours, skills, knowledge and traditions, and the ways that the changing needs of people as they age are served and neglected throughout the food system. This will also include important intergenerational engagements as the teenagers who featured in 2023 will return in 2024 for dialogue with their elders, as well as sharing of food traditions between generations.
Beyond these and other important serious conversations, there will be plenty of chef-led and participatory eating and cooking events, allowing participants to find and share their common humanity over meals in different parts of the city. The 2023 culinary experience linking food and faith will be expanded upon, with inter-faith dining events curated across the city. Kids will get in on the action too, with food adventures for parents and children to enjoy together.
Once again there will be virtual events on offer, building on pan-African connections established in 2023 and opening the conversations up to other participants and panellists beyond the continent. The successful food systems art exhibition at the 16 on Lerotholi gallery in Langa, will return with new artworks and expanded venue in 2024. And walking tours will feature again, using the landscape of the city and the township to unpack spatial and historic food systems.
People and organisations wishing to join the engagement on these themes are welcome to connect at hello@foodindaba.org.
Further details of Food Indaba 2024, as they are revealed, will be available at www.foodindaba.org and across social media channels:
Facebook: fb.me/food_dialogues
Instagram: @food_dialogues
X (Twitter): @food_dialogues
LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/showcase/food-dialogues
Food Indaba is hosted by the SA Urban Food & Farming Trust with co-host and sponsor SOLVE@Waterfront. Co-sponsored by the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security, the DG Murray Trust, and AfriFOODlinks (funded by the European Union). Event partners include the UNESCO Chair in Science and Education for African Food Systems, the Western Cape Economic Development Partnership, the African Centre for Cities, the Southern Africa Food Lab, Bertha House, Philippi Village, ICLEI Africa, City of Cape Town, Western Cape Government, 16 on Lerotholi Gallery and Derrick Integrated Communications.
ENDS
Contact: Kurt Ackermann: kurt@fairfood.org.za +27 83 508 1066
Media enquiries: Lisa Pellatt media@foodindaba.org +27 84 553 4629
About the SA Urban Food Farming Trust Founded in 2014, the SA Urban Food Farming Trust is a non-profit public benefit organisation that works through food and farming to strengthen South Africa’s urban communities and the ecosystems that sustain them. Details at fairfood.org.za