By utilizing these emerging data-driven solutions for food and agriculture and viewing them as part of a wider economic enabling framework, partnerships can be leveraged and scaled. Data from satellite and geospatial operators, ICT and telecommunications providers, e-commerce and logistics companies, and finance providers could all be brought to bear, alongside data from other actors who intersect the food space, such as the mining sector’s land utilization patterns. These corresponding data sets brought together in a joint ecosystem that informs the wider economic and societal development can thereby create a much greater transformational effect.
Food market and agri-dealer reductions, trade obstructions, job losses, manufacturing and production facility shutdowns, shortages of some food items as purchasing habits changed and bulk buyers such as restaurants and canteens faced closures, and other logistical and tactical problems characterized the first half of 2020. As the pandemic has advanced, the wider social, economic, and knock-on effects of the crisis have started to exert enormous pressures on global, regional, and local food systems, threatening to disrupt nutrition on a large scale and trigger food shortages as primary food production is affected. Covid-19 has also exposed the underlying injustices and inequities in the food system.
The COVID Action for Food Systems is an African multi-stakeholder effort launched by African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) in collaboration with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Economic Forum. The aim of this report is to help stakeholders gain a better understanding of an evolving collection of approaches for data-driven food systems. It looks at how data can help people make better decisions, advance market, product, and relationship models, and empower stakeholders all along the value chain. It focuses on real-world examples of these models in action.
The report leads to the recognition that, in order to make the world's food systems more prepared and stable in the future, fostering a data-driven culture is needed, that allows for success and scale and is assisted by key enablers such as policy, capacity building, technology, and connectivity, and mobilizing leadership.
