The 2025 Food Indaba in Cape Town, South Africa offered rich insights into how African cities can reimagine and foster transformation of their food environments. While the theme of AI and the Food System was the starting point this year, the discussions and activities surfaced ten broader lessons that are relevant across the continent.
- Collaboration drives momentum. The Indaba showed the power of multistakeholder partnerships spanning communities, universities, government, nonprofits, businesses, and media in creating critical mass for change.
- Youth and entrepreneurs need tailored entry points. From a masterclass for food start-ups to workshops with school children, targeted engagement builds capacity and sparks innovation.
- Data sovereignty matters. Africa’s underrepresentation in global data highlights the urgent need to generate, own, and protect local knowledge, from indigenous farming practices to informal market dynamics.
- Ethical frameworks are essential. AI and other technologies should be guided by African values like ubuntu, ensuring fairness, dignity, and transparency in governance.
5. Solutions must be context-specific. Imported “smart city” models rarely work without the basics of electricity, internet, and logistics in place. Cities must focus on real local needs first.
6. Chefs are influential change agents. By shaping consumer culture and storytelling, chefs can advocate for sustainability and highlight ethical dimensions of food.
7. Experiential learning works. Walking tours through Cape Town neighbourhoods revealed for diverse attendees the economic and cultural realities of food systems in ways that conventional reports cannot.
8. Food creates space for dialogue. Intimate dining experiences turned meals into powerful platforms for exploring heritage, migration, and identity, and for bringing diverse stakeholders together to build understanding and social capital.
9. Communications platforms amplify impact. With media partnerships reaching millions, the Indaba demonstrated how visibility sustains food systems on the public agenda long after the event ends.
10. Consistency matters. The Food Indaba has been consistently hosted annually at the same time for the past four years and three other times before that. The attendance, awareness, partners, speakers and overall impact multiply year on year. Those interested and like-minded know to plan ahead, get involved, and crowd in.
Together, these lessons remind us that transforming urban food environments requires both technical innovation and social imagination, while remaining anchored in African realities, values, and voices. Platforms like the Food Indaba show the value of bringing diverse stakeholders together in one space, where dialogue, collaboration, and creativity can spark the systemic change that no single actor can achieve alone.