
by Ruth Smith, University of Leeds
April 3, 2024
How many words is a photo worth? In Tanzania, FoSTA-Health is exploring gender and agricultural livelihood dynamics in the East Usambara Mountains in Tanga Region through the use of photos.
Read more: “the photos have voices and they can speak” - reflections from Photovoice in Tanzania

Katharine Vincent and Willem Colenbrander, Kulima Integrated Development Solutions
April 3, 2024
Urban areas have particular food systems – and urban residents have particular needs to be met from those food systems. The lack of land in cities means that, whilst it may be possible to have small gardens, much food is procured through local markets. Availability of food to consumers in markets is dependent on trading networks and transport links, which are both necessary to bring in produce from outside of the city. This makes urban food supply vulnerable to any perturbations in those supply chains and transport networks.
Urban food supply and trade patterns were disrupted in Zambia in January 2024 as a result of flash flooding. The month saw a number of particularly heavy rainfall events. In one 24-hour period mid-January 2024, 80mm of rain fell across parts of Lusaka, which is around a third of the average monthly total for January. With many urban areas in southern African cities having inadequate drainage, this rapidly led to inundation of property, including key trading spaces.
Read more: Flooding, cholera, and the impact on food systems in Zambia

By Gildas Assogba, Wageningen University
March 12, 2024
At a FoSTA-Health consultation organized in October 2023 in Lilongwe, Malawi, a Ministry of Agriculture official shared an anecdote: “A relative from my native village once visited me here in Lilongwe. I served up a feast—fish, meat, beans, kachumbari, and kilombero rice pilau. A few days later, my mother called me. I couldn’t believe my ears when she told me that the relative had left dissatisfied with the food—only because I hadn’t served any nsima (maize porridge)!”
This anecdote is an apt illustration of how central maize is to Malawian cuisine. And yet, it was only around 500 years ago that maize made its way to Africa. Since then, the food system—diets, institutions, policies, cultural practices—have come to organize themselves around maize.

By Emmanuel Likoya, Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST)
March 13, 2024
Malawi is experiencing a ‘precipitation dipole’- the ongoing El Niño has brought anomalously high levels of rainfall to its northern parts even as the south reels under a severe drought. This is a result of its coincidental location, with its northern parts falling right under the point of convergence of three moisture-laden airmasses the average location of which shifts northwards during El Niño events.
Read more: Wet up north, dry down south: Meteorological insights into El Niño impacts in Malawi

Emmanuel Likoya and David Mkwambisi (Malawi University of Science and Technology), Andrew Dougill (University of York)
February 7, 2024
Irrigation development is at the center of agricultural innovation in Malawi, with land under irrigation more than doubling over the last two decades. It is widely perceived that irrigation provides a route to achieving food security and agricultural commercialization goals in the face of shocks such as droughts and floods. This has been supported by the view that the agriculture sector is largely dominated by poorly developed rainfed systems which are perpetually underperforming and overly susceptible to climatic shocks, more so for key cereals such as maize.
Read more: Agriculture innovation, water resource use and resilience to shocks in Southern Malawi

By Akbar Ganatra, Wageningen University
January 23, 2024
Globally, mosquito-borne diseases (MBDs) make for about 17% of the total burden of infectious diseases. Africa, especially its sub-Saharan countries, continues to be a global hotspot in this regard, with the risk of MBDs set to increase in the continent as climate change expands mosquito habitats. It is against this context that FoSTA-Health is setting up field experiments, which will help improve our understanding of land-use as a contributing factor to incidence of mosquitoes.
Read more: Does exposure to pesticide in farmlands boost mosquito populations?

by Rachel Mkandawire, Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN)
January 19, 2024
Southern Africa is facing a strong El Niño event, which is expected to last at least until April 2024, causing disruptions in weather patterns and a surge in temperatures, as reported by the World Meteorological Organization. The impact will extend into 2024, leading to below-average harvests. Over 20 million people will need food assistance between January and March 2024, and below-average harvests will result in increased needs, peaking in early 2025. Concerns are high for deficit-producing regions like Zimbabwe, southern Malawi, southern and central Mozambique, and southern Madagascar.
These anticipated challenges call for urgent action to transform Southern Africa’s food systems to weather events like this. With its interdisciplinary and systems-based approach, the Food Systems Transformation in Southern Africa for One Health (FoSTA Health) project is strategically positioned to evaluate and respond to the medium and long-term implications of these changes in food systems.
Read more: Navigating El Niño Challenges in Southern Africa: The role of stakeholder engagement
More Articles …
- COP28 outcomes and relevance to FoSTA-Health
- Mapping the Stakes: Food System Transformations and One Health
- Stakeholder insights from FoSTA-Health national dialogues help guide future food system modelling across Southern Africa
- Food and trade regulations in South Africa and Tanzania
- Governance, Value Chains and Emergent Export Commodities in Tanzania
- The relationship between women’s empowerment, engagement in markets, and food systems transformation in Tanga, Tanzania
- What dietary transitions are happening in Zambia, and what are the One Health effects of these transitions?
- FoSTA-Health stakeholder engagement and scoping activities (March-May, 2023)
- Farm management, landscape structure, and vector-borne diseases in Southern Africa
- Scoping food systems in Malawi and Zambia
