The Longkloof Precinct sits in the suburb of Gardens, just off Kloof Street in Cape Town’s City Bowl. Once historic buildings that originally served industrial and educational purposes, the area has been transformed into a dynamic mixed-use hub lined with trendy shops, restaurants, and a hotel.
Here’s everything you can enjoy in Longkloof on your next visit:
Things To Do
Shop At Rosey and Vittori
This South African fashion brand is redefining edgy sophistication. Founded by creative duo Isabella Rosa Bisogno and Steven Eddie Rosenbaum (whose grandmother’s surname, Vittori, inspires the brand’s name), the label began its journey a decade ago with a focus on menswear. At the Longkloof store, you will find statement dresses, tailored sets, pants, and jackets for men and women. And if you’re lucky, you might just catch a few coveted pieces on sale.
You can’t miss ShangriLa; its green building stands proudly on Park Road. Step inside, and you’ll discover a thoughtfully curated selection of clothing, art and décor pieces that reflect creativity and calm. Beyond retail, ShangriLa is a space to breathe, move, and recharge. Join one of their yoga or meditation sessions (see their website for details), then relax at the cozy café for a cup of tea.
Girlies who love sunnies, listen up! You will find the perfect pair at Ballo, a quaint little store with the season’s trendiest shades. There are fun, playful colours to match your mood.
Innovation City is an exclusive workspace that brings together a community of startups, scaleups, corporates, entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators. This members-only space (application forms are available on their website) aims to drive collaboration and business growth in the city. When you need a break, the on-site coffee shop is the perfect place to connect, recharge, or spark your next big idea.
Coffee shop by day, wine bar by night. Tucked just off Park Road, Vine and Dandy lets you enjoy the best of both worlds: freshly brewed coffee and award-winning wines. Vine and Dandy is pet-friendly, so bring your dogs along to relax on the pup sack beds while you catch up on work or hang out with your mates. Wine lovers, every Thursday, the restaurant hosts wine tastings from 5pm to 7pm, where you can sample a variety of wines and discover new favourites.
Cafe Sofi by tashas is the brainchild of Natasha and Savva Sideris, the founders of Tashas Group, as an ode to their mother, Sophia Electra. Every detail is animated by Sophia’s spirit. Her loves, from cakes, cats and polka dots, to orchids, leopard print, and the Pink Panther, echo through the interiors and daily specials. Her fascination with flavour comes to life on a menu of simple, soulful dishes, including honey butter croissants, rosti and beef ragu, tiramisu, and a steak roll. Café Sofi is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily.
If you’re looking to enjoy delicious treats in a gorgeous setting, Custodian Pastry Bar, the latest edition from Hoghouse Brewing Company, is for you. Sip on freshly brewed coffee while indulging in baked pastries, rustic breads, and all-day toasties. There’s also a carefully curated selection of deli items and frozen goodies to take home and enjoy later.
From the culinary brilliance of Chef Bertus Basson comes Ongetem Restaurant & Bar at Canopy by Hilton Cape Town Longkloof. “Ongetem,” Afrikaans for “untamed,” perfectly embodies the restaurant’s spirit. The menu celebrates bold, flame-cooked dishes bursting with flavour, perfectly paired with equally inventive cocktails.
Canopy by Hilton Longkloof brings bold design, local flair, and laid-back vibes to one of the city’s most exciting neighbourhoods. Just steps from Kloof Street, expect warm welcomes, a sweet Cape Town treat in your room, and epic views of Table Mountain and Lion’s Head. Dine at Ongetem Restaurant & Bar, sweat it out at the 24-hour gym, or bar-hopping nearby -it’s the perfect base for exploring the city.
Stephany Musombi and engineers preparing the banana stems for processing at KIRDI. Credit: Wilson Odhiambo/IPS
NAIROBI, Nov 16 2023 (IPS) – ’Going Green’ seems to Dr Jacquline Kisato’s favorite catchphrase as she passionately explains her eco-friendly sanitary towel, a product she expects will help empower women and young girls while also putting money into farmers’ pockets.
Kisato is a lecturer at the Kenyatta University (KU), Fashion Design and Marketing, currently working on a project to develop affordable and eco-friendly sanitary towels while also finding a solution for sustainable packaging materials.
Kisato’s venture started out to help communities get a source of employment through the commercialization of banana stems – products that were considered useless by farmers and would usually be left to rot away on farms.
After the Kenyan government enforced a ban on the use of plastic bags in 2018, there was a need to find immediate alternatives.
Plastic bags were a necessity for grocers and fast-food vendors, an item that made it easy for customers to carry their goods home. Despite their advantage, however, their negative impact on the environment could no longer be overlooked.
‘’I started looking at this project from an entrepreneurship point of view on how I could commercialize banana stem fibers. The government had just banned single-use plastic bags, and market vendors needed alternatives to serve their customers,’’ Kisato told IPS.
‘’Poorly disposed sanitary towels also formed part of the pollution problem since they were composed of plastic,’’ she added.
According to Kisato, however, her need to empower women and young girls through affordable sanitary towels was something that she always had in mind after noticing the struggles that school-going girls went through.
‘’While walking along the hallways one day, a student on campus stopped me and asked if I could help her with a packet of sanitary pads. This incident shocked me as for a long time, I had assumed ‘period poverty’ was only experienced amongst high school children,’’ Kisato said.
Kisato and her research team interviewed 400 high school girls from Gatundi, Kibera, and Kawangware, where they found out that more than 50 percent of the girls in these low-income areas could hardly afford sanitary pads even when at home.
This did not sit well with the don as she felt something needed to be done about it.
It was while researching alternatives to plastic bags that she realized that she could solve two problems at the same time.
Kisato, therefore, applied for the National Research Fund (NRF) in 2018 with the aim of developing eco-friendly plastic bags and sanitary towels. Her wish came through when NRF granted Kenyatta University Ksh.9 million (about US $ 61,623) in 2020, with her taking the lead as the principal investigator in the project.
Her team is made up of scholars from different departments and institutions and also includes Ph.D. and master’s students, with each one of them playing a major role in seeing the project through.
‘’I lead a team of engineers from the Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute (KIRDI), whose task is to reverse engineer machines that can extract fiber from banana stems and use them to create eco-friendly packaging and sanitary towels,’’ she explained. “I also have researchers from Moi University whose work was to turn the extracted fiber into soft materials for use.”
Kisato’s aim was to produce quality sanitary towels that could compete with what was already in the market while still being eco-friendly, a fact that led her to seek the expertise of Edwin Madivoli, a chemistry lecturer at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT).
According to Kisato, the towels on the market have a component in them called hydrogel, which enables them to retain fluids for longer, and were also lined with plastic sheets to prevent any leakage. Our intention is to replicate the same but use bioplastic materials, which can degrade as opposed to the normal plastic that is being used.
From her research, Kisato also discovered that Africans, on average, wore sanitary towels for longer as compared to women and girls from developed countries and were thus at risk of getting bacterial infections. This was due to limited access and affordability in Africa.
‘’The recommended period for one to have on a sanitary pad is about three hours, which means that it should be changed at least three times a day to avoid any risk of infections. This is, however, not the case for many girls in Africa due to poverty,’’ Kisato explained to IPS.
‘’We thought adding anti-microbial properties to our product would therefore make it as good or even better than what was in the market,’’ said Kisato.
The research team also found out that there were a lot of myths surrounding menstrual flow among young girls, a fact that led to a lot of stigmatization, which made it difficult for them to understand how to use sanitary towels properly.
Some of the notable ideas that girls told each other concerning menstrual flow included:
It is a curse from God
Girls who had periods were considered dirty and impure
Their faces would become pale from losing blood
‘’These are beliefs that need to be done away with by encouraging parents and the government to speak about monthly periods with young girls openly,’’ Kisato said.
For the second phase of the project, Madivoli’s chemistry expertise came in handy, and the Research Scholarship and Innovation Fund (RSIF) was happy to add an additional Ksh.9 million (about USD 59,000) for Kisato to continue what she had started.
‘’My role is to ensure our sanitary pads are of the same quality as what is in the market while at the same time maintaining an eco-friendly nature, which is the main agenda of this whole project,’’ Madivoli told IPS.
‘’I am tasked with the development of hydrogels, production of bioplastics, and finding a way to incorporate anti-microbial properties into our products to protect the users from possible infections,’’ he said.
JKUAT received funding of Ksh.800,000 (about US $ 5477) from the Kenya National Innovation Agency (KENIA) to further help Madivoli with this research.
“As they are left to dry up on the farms, banana stems are known to produce large amounts of methane, which is a harmful greenhouse gas that contributes to the climate change problems that we are trying to tackle, added Madivoli. ‘”Having an alternative use for the stems therefore limits the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere.’’
Madivoli said that most banana farmers usually do not know what to do with the stems once they have done their harvest, and this project gives them a way to earn some extra income as they expect to buy the stems from them at Ksh.35 per stem.
“This project will not only be environmentally friendly but will also create jobs for the people who go to cut the stems from the farms while also finding use for the biomass that the farmers thought was useless,’’ he concluded.
Once it is up and running, they expect to source banana stems from counties such as Kisii, Muranga, Embu, Meru, and parts of western Kenya.
Stephany Musombi is one of Kisato’s students specializing in textiles whose task in the project is to come up with quality packaging materials.
‘’Apart from the banana fiber, I am also experimenting with other biomass such as pineapple and seaweed,’’ Musombi told IPS. If I can find a way to make this work, the project will open up a market for seaweed and pineapple biomass.
Kisato’s project could not have picked a better time there is an international joint push for green solutions to help mitigate climate change. On September 4, 2023, Kenya also played host to the climate summit that attracted leaders from across Africa.
Kenya’s president, William Ruto, drove himself in a tiny electric car to the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC), where he challenged the African leaders and innovators to find sustainable solutions to their daily activities that can help them reduce the carbon print in the continent and globally.
‘’Africa can power all energy needs with renewable resources. The continent has enough potential to be entirely self-sufficient using wind, solar, geothermal, sustainable biomass, and hydropower energy. Africa can be a green industrial hub that helps other regions achieve their net zero strategies by 2050,’’ Ruto said at the summit.
Kisato expects her product to hit the market later this year, where she plans to make it more affordable for all. Her intention is to team up with startups or established companies that deal with toiletries.
‘’The cheapest sanitary packet in the market costs Ksh.140. We expect ours to go as low as Ksh.100, Kisato,’’ concluded.
Kenyatta University’s Vice Chancellor, Paul Wainaina, lauded the project, stating that it will enable the country to meet its industrial needs while conserving the environment.
An artist’s impression of the completed Centre of Excellence in Kigali. The center supported by IRCAD is expected to assist with the training of surgeons throughout the continent with minimally invasive surgery training. Credit: Supplied
KIGALI, Nov 13 2023 (IPS) – In a newly established Centre of Excellence located in Masaka, a suburb of the Rwandan capital city, Kigali, an expanded lab, complete with innovative facilities and specialized instruments, is now giving surgeons a conducive environment to simulate how to perform minimally invasive surgeries.
French-based Institute for Research into Cancer of the Digestive System (IRCAD) played a major part in this initiative, the first ever on the African continent.
According to medical experts, in comparison to traditional open surgery, often requiring the patient to incur invasive large incisions, minimally invasive surgery procedures allow doctors to insert a camera through a small incision, or sometimes no incision at all.
Dr Alexandre Hostettler, head of the Surgical Data Science Team at IRCAD, pointed out that harnessing robotic and artificial intelligence is critical to enhance the capability of surgical treatment in Africa.
Robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery denotes the surgical technique where the robot-applied laparoscopic tools are remotely controlled by a human operator at a console.
“Performing surgeries using robotic assistance can be more comfortable for surgeons, as they can sit at a console rather than standing for extended periods, reducing physical strain,” he told IPS.
The center also aims to train medical doctors from across Africa about how to perform surgery using very small incisions, allowing the introduction of an endoscope connected to a camera with a magnified image leading to a very precise dissection of the operated organs.
Prof Jacques Marescaux, President and Founder of IRCAD, is convinced that the new center represents a turning point in surgical education and practice in Rwanda and sub-Saharan Africa. “The center is a catalyst for all African surgeons and computer scientists,” he said in an exclusive interview with IPS.
At the same time, Rwanda is striving to build an integrated medical service system that provides high-quality services and is efficient in medical facility management. Rwandan President Paul Kagame believes the key task is to keep investing significantly in public health infrastructure.
“The [new] Centre of Excellence is not serving Rwanda alone. It is serving Africa. It is also improving and taking beyond the talent we have in Africa to a much higher level,” Kagame said at the inauguration of the new facility, for which operations and running costs will be fully funded by the Government of Rwanda and IRCAD France.
Some medical experts observe that despite its numerous advantages over traditional surgery, especially the shorter hospital stay and less blood loss with lower overall costs, the new robotic surgery is not widespread in low- and middle-income countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In addition, some researchers argue that computer-assisted navigation and robotics are sometimes challenging to use by perioperative nurses when caring for patients undergoing these procedures.
Dr Christine Mutegaraba, a surgeon from one of the private clinics in Kigali, told IPS that providing appropriate training remains critical for specialized medical practitioners to rely on these robotic surgery systems.
“Huge investment is also needed to ensure that clinics and other specialized referral hospitals are equipped with devices needed to perform these kind of surgical techniques,” Mutegaraba said.
According to the data from Rwanda’s Ministry of Health, laparoscopic was the sole type of minimally invasive surgical technique used by few medical practitioners across the country, and there wasn’t any formal training in place to develop the technical skills for additional doctors.
With the inauguration of the new center, both officials and health experts see hope in developing and advancing this technology, where specialized medical doctors will now be able to perform various kinds of surgeries.
While the introduction of innovative solutions in the health sector remains exciting for health officials, Marescaux points out that the new robotic technology is set to provide patients with high-quality medical services.
“We are working on building the largest team combined with computer scientists and surgeons in Africa,” he said.
Estimates by IRCAD show that access to surgical care in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), such as countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, is still extremely limited, which causes a burden on the health care systems.
It said thanks to the center, African surgeons will not have to travel across the continent to receive the best training in surgery since it will be available right at home.
Whereas the UN agency recommends that African countries significantly increase investments in building the health workforce to meet their current and future needs, new findings show that that the region has a ratio of 1.55 health workers (physicians, nurses, and midwives) per 1000 people.
Experts now believe that robotic technology will also lessen surgeon’s workload by efficiently managing the patient flow.
“As technology evolves, robotic systems are likely to incorporate more advanced features, integrating AI, augmented reality, and other technologies to aid the surgical process,” Hostettler said.
Artist and farmer Chavely Casimiro and her daughter Leah Amanda Díaz feed one of the biodigesters at Finca del Medio, a farm in central Cuba. The biodigester produces about seven meters of biogas per day, enough energy for cooking, baking and dehydrating food. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS
TAGUASCO, Cuba, Oct 2 2023 (IPS) – Combining technologies and innovations to take advantage of solar, wind, hydro and biomass potential has made the Finca del Medio farm an example in Cuba in the use of clean energies, which are the basis of its agroecological and environmental sanitation practices.
Renewable energy sources are used in many everyday processes such as electricity generation, lighting, water supply, irrigation and water heating, as well as in cooking, dehydrating, drying, baking and refrigeration of foodstuffs.
“We started out with windmills on artesian wells and hydraulic rams to pump water. That gave us an awareness of the amount of energy we needed and of how to expand its use,” said farmer José Antonio Casimiro, 65, owner of this agroecological family farm located in the center of this long Caribbean island nation.
“More incentives, better policies and financial support are needed so that farming families have sufficient energy for their work and can improve the comfort of their homes and quality of life.” — José Antonio Casimiro
The farmer expressed his appreciation of the help of his son, 41, also named Antonio Casimiro, in the installation of the two mills at Finca del Medio, during the days in which IPS visited the farm and shared in activities with the family.
“There was no one to assemble or repair them. We both had to study a great deal, and we learned to do a lot of construction things as we went along and perfected the techniques,” said Casimiro junior, referring to the equipment that is now inactive, but is capable of extracting some 4,000 liters of water daily from the water table.
When rainfall is abundant and the volume of the 55,000-cubic-meter-capacity reservoir rises, the hydraulic ram comes to life. The device diverts about 20,000 liters of water to a 45,000-liter tank, 400 meters away and 18 meters above the level of the reservoir.
“The only energy the rams use is the water pressure itself. Placing it on the highest part of the land makes it easier to use the slope for gravity irrigation, or to fill the animals’ water troughs,” explained Chavely Casimiro, 28, the youngest daughter of José Antonio and Mileidy Rodríguez, also 65.
An artist who also inherited the family’s “farming gene”, Chavely highlighted some twenty innovations made by her father to the hydraulic ram, in order to optimize water collection.
Other inventions speed up the assembly and disassembly of the windmills for maintenance, or in the event of tropical cyclones.
“We have been replacing the water supply with solar panels, which are more efficient. They can be removed faster (than the windmill blades) if a hurricane is coming. You can incorporate batteries and store the energy,” said Casimiro.
“Let’s say a windmill costs about 2,000 dollars. With that amount you can buy four 350-watt panels. That would be more than a kilowatt hour (kWh) of power. You buy a couple of batteries for 250 dollars each, and with that amount of kWh you can pump the equivalent of the water of about 10 windmills,” he said.
But the farmer said the windmills are more important than the energy they generate. “It would be nice if every farm had at least one windmill. For me it is very symbolic to see them pumping up water,” he said.
Lorenzo Díaz, the husband of Chavely Casimiro, uses a solar oven to cook food. In the background can be seen a windmill and a solar heater, other technologies that take advantage of the potential for renewable energies on the Finca del Medio farm in central Cuba. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS
Innovations
Located in the municipality of Taguasco, in the central province of Sancti Spíritus, some 350 kilometers east of Havana, Finca del Medio follows a family farm model including permaculture, agroecology and agricultural production based on the use of clean energy.
In 1993, Casimiro and Rodríguez with their children Leidy and José Antonio – a year later, Chavely was born – decided to settle on the 13-hectare farm of their paternal grandparents, with the aim of reversing its deterioration and soil erosion and installing perimeter fences.
The erosion of the land was due to the fact that in the past the farm was dedicated to the cultivation of tobacco, which depleted the soil, and later it had fallen into abandonment, as well as the house.
The older daughter is the only one who does not live and work on the farm, although she does spend time there, and a total of ten family members live there, including four grandchildren. All the adults either work on the farm or help out with different tasks.
With the help of technological innovations adapted to the local ecosystem, and empirical and scientific knowledge, the family has become self-sufficient in rice, beans, tubers, vegetables, milk, eggs, honey, meat, fish and more than 30 varieties of fruit. The only basic foodstuffs not produced on the farm are sugar and salt.
They sell all surplus production, including cow’s milk, for which they have specific contracts, and they are also promoting agrotourism, for which they are making further improvements to the facilities.
At Finca del Medio, a system of channels and ditches allows the infiltration of rainwater, reduces erosion of the topsoil and conserves as much water as possible for subsequent irrigation.
These innovations also benefit neighboring communities by mitigating flooding and replenishing the water table, which has brought water back to formerly dry wells.
The construction of the house is also an offshoot of technological solutions to the scarcity of resources such as steel, which led to the design of dome-shaped roofs made of mud bricks and cement.
The design aids in rainwater harvesting, improves hurricane protection, and boosts ventilation, creating cooler spaces, which reduces the need for air conditioning equipment and bolsters savings.
Along with food production, the new generations and members of the Casimiro-Rodriguez family engage in educational activities to raise awareness about good agricultural and environmental practices.
Students from nearby schools come to the farm to learn about these practices, as well as specialists in agroecology and people from different parts of the world, interested in sharing the experience. Meanwhile, several members of the family have traveled abroad to give workshops on agroecology and permaculture.
Farmers José Antonio Casimiro (R) and his son of the same name talk in the mechanical workshop at their Finca del Medio farm. Both have come up with innovations for the use of windmills, the hydraulic ram and biodigesters, as well as agricultural tools. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS
Solar and biogas potential
On one of the side roofs of the house are 28 photovoltaic panels that provide about eight kWh, connected to batteries. The stored energy covers the household’s needs during power outages that affect the island due to fuel shortages and breakdowns and problems in maintenance of its aging thermoelectric plants.
In addition, the household has three solar water heaters with a capacity of 380 liters.
Next to the kitchen, two fixed-dome biodigesters produce another renewable fuel, biogas, composed mainly of methane and carbon dioxide from the anaerobic decomposition of animal manure, crop waste and “even sewage from the house, which we channel so that the waste does not contaminate the environment,” said Casimiro.
Due to the current shortage of manure as the number of cows has been reduced, only one of the biodigesters is now operational, producing about seven meters of biogas per day, sufficient for cooking, baking and dehydration of foodstuffs.
The innovative family devised a mechanism to extract – without emptying the pond of water or stopping biogas production – from the bottom the solids used as biofertilizers, as well as hundreds of liters of effluent for fertigation (a combination of organic fertilizers and water) of the crops, by gravity.
He also expressed gratitude for the link with other scientific institutions such as the Integrated Center for Appropriate Technologies, based in the central province of Camagüey, which is focused on offering solutions to the needs of water supply and environmental sanitation, and played an essential role in the installation of the hydraulic ram.
The farmer said the farm produces the equivalent of about 20 kWh from the combination of renewable energies, and if only conventional electricity were used, the cost would be around 83 dollars a month.
Lorenzo Díaz feeds firewood into an innovative stove that allows the Finca del Medio farm to efficiently cook food, dehydrate or dry fruits and spices, heat water and preserve meat, among other functions. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS
Efficient stove
In the large, functional kitchen, the stove covered with white tiles and a chimney has been remodeled 16 times to make it more efficient and turn it into another source of pride at the farm.
Fueled by firewood, coconut shells and other waste, “the stove makes it possible to cook food, dehydrate fruits and spices, heat water and preserve meat, among other tasks,” Rodríguez told IPS as she listed some of the advantages of this other offshoot of the family’s ingenuity that helps her as a skilled cook and pastry chef.
She pointed out that by extracting all the smoke, “the design makes better use of the heat, which will be used in a sauna” being built next to the kitchen, for the enjoyment of the family and potential tourists.
Casimiro is in favor of incorporating clean energy into agricultural processes, but he said that “more incentives, better policies and financial support are needed so that farming families have sufficient energy for their work and can improve the comfort of their homes and quality of life.”
Since 2014, Cuba has had a policy for the development of renewable energy sources and their efficient use.
A substantial modification of the national energy mix, which is highly dependent on the import of fossil fuels and hit by cyclical energy deficits, is a matter of national security
However, regulations with certain customs exemptions and other incentives to increase the production of solar, wind, biomass and hydroelectric energies in this Caribbean island nation still seem insufficient in view of the high prices of these technologies, the domestic economic crisis and the meager purchasing power of most Cuban families.
Clean sources account for only five percent of the island’s electricity generation, a scenario that the government wants to radically transform, with an ambitious goal of a 37 percent proportion by 2030, which is increasingly difficult to achieve.
Delegates outside the Climate Action Innovation Hub on the frontlines of the Africa Climate Summit. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa
NAIROBI, Sep 6 2023 (IPS) – A group of young African startups made their presence known at the Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, hoping to play a big role in promoting home-grown climate-oriented solutions.
According to Dr Yossi Matias, Vice-President of the Google Research initiative, pushing for innovative solutions and research around climate change remains critical for Africa when considering that the continent continues to feel the impacts of global warming in many ways.
“Most solutions promoted by African startups and innovators are in danger of being ignored because of many factors, but there is a way to overcome these challenges,” Yossi told IPS.
Among the solutions put forward by young innovators at the Climate Action Innovation Hub, which took place on the sidelines of the summit, were clean energy, climate-smart agriculture and sustainable land management, biodiversity conservation, water storage and conservation, waste management, and circular economy.
The innovations can also enhance the key cross-cutting areas needed to amplify climate cooperation and action, including climate advocacy, empowerment, awareness raising, capacity building, and climate literacy.
Other key areas of innovation are green transport and climate-resilient infrastructure, resilient, climate-smart cities, digital transformation, and food security.
The latest estimates by the UN agencies show that changing precipitation patterns, rising temperatures, and more extreme weather contributed to mounting food insecurity, poverty, and displacement in Africa.
Official figures show that food insecurity increases by 5–20 percentage points with each flood or drought in sub-Saharan Africa
While African Governments are committed to supporting climate solution innovation to varying levels and with different approaches to tackle this phenomenon, some experts believe that what is needed is to encourage a growing number of African startups to shift in mindset—by becoming providers of solutions to improving the continental climate change resilience.
“What is needed for these young African innovators is to look for mentors and incubators because, as an entrepreneur, you need to learn how to develop a successful product that brings some short-term and long-term positive benefits to combat climate change in your community,” Yossi said.
Through its Accelerator programs, the Google Research initiative currently seeks to empower startups, developers, and nonprofits, especially in Africa, to better solve the world’s biggest challenges — from economic development, diversity, sustainability, and climate change — relying on its technology.
For example, one of the initiatives presented at the summit seeks to produce plastic waste collected from local communities in the Rwandan capital Kigali where a startup is producing handcrafts from plastic waste collected in the city.
Sonia Umulinga, a young Rwandan female entrepreneur and owner of ‘Plastic Craft’, a company that seeks to tackle the problem of plastic pollution, told IPS that key priority had been given not only to help reduce plastic pollution but also to her new business model in using the collected waste to produce unique products on the markets.
Harsen Nyambe Nyambe, Director, Sustainable Environment and Blue Economy, African Union Commission, told delegates that the current situation where the lack of ownership over innovations, coupled with a whole narrative built around imported solutions, constitutes a major challenge for the continent to combat climate change.
“Africa needs to redefine on how to engage of the issue of climate change, and countries need to work together to find possible innovative solutions to the challenges they are facing,” he said.
While some officials and experts cite innovation as an important driver of growth and the fight against hunger and malnutrition, which continue to affect major parts of the African continent, others believe there is a need for these African startup entrepreneurs to test and refine these ideas for the benefit of their community.
Current efforts for Africa’s transformation emphasize switching agriculture from subsistence to commercial, which means producing a surplus for the markets and making agriculture become a business while relying on home-grown innovative ideas.
“We should not give up because we need these startup home-grown solutions to help small-scale farmers meet their needs,” she told delegates.
However, some small-scale farmers and pastoralists believe that indigenous innovation also constitutes another driver for innovation in African Agricultural systems considering that climate change impacts are stalling progress towards food security on the continent.
Tumal Orto, a livestock breeds farmer from Marsabit County in Northern Kenya, told IPS that weaving indigenous knowledge with scientific research remains critical.
“Small-scale farmers are also innovators in their own ways using local ingenuity in their practices,” he said.
However, most experts at the innovation hub on the sidelines of the Africa Climate Summit (ACS) in Nairobi were unanimous that more productive and resilient solutions to combat climate change in Africa will still require a major shift in the way various resources are managed.
Conscious Food Systems Alliance (CoFSA) promotes consciousness as a key evidence-based practice to support systemic change – reframing how people think about food to unlock food systems transformation, nourishing all people, and regenerating planet Earth. Pictured here a farmer in Katfoura village on the Tristao Islands in Guinea benefits from opportunities to generate income and improve community life. Credit: UN Women/Joe Saade
NAIROBI, Jun 12 2023 (IPS) – Deep in the Egyptian desert, the SEKEM community celebrates its first wheat crop – grown to alleviate shortages and price increases caused by the war in Ukraine, and the latest crop in a 46-year history of regenerative development, which has effectively made the desert bloom. On another continent, a consumer who buys acai collected and produced by the Yawanawá in Brazil helps protect 200,000 acres of land.
Food connects people, cultures, and planet Earth. But rather than nourishing global health and well-being, food systems remain at the heart of the global community’s social and environmental crises today.
Massive investment and efforts to transform food systems and existing policy and technical solutions are not delivering the desired impact. In the face of the global food systems crises manifested in food insecurity, unsustainable agricultural practices, and climate change, re-examining the origins of ongoing crises and barriers to transformation is critical.
Reframing How People Think About Food
Against this backdrop, the Conscious Food Systems Alliance (CoFSA) promotes consciousness as a key evidence-based practice to support systemic change. The alliance is built on the premise that reframing how people think about food is the key to unlocking food systems transformation, nourishing all people, and regenerating planet Earth.
“We know our food systems are in a critical state and sit at the core of the regeneration process this world greatly needs, and we believe this can only happen with a change of mindsets and heart-sets, with different values and worldviews,” says Thomas Legrand, CoFSA Lead Technical Advisor.
Convened by UNDP, CoFSA is a movement of food, agriculture, and consciousness practitioners united around a common goal: to support people from across food and agriculture systems to cultivate the inner capacities that activate systemic change and regeneration.
The alliance aims to leverage “the power of consciousness and inner transformation, including proven approaches such as mindfulness, compassion, systems leadership, indigenous and feminine wisdoms, to support systemic change towards sustainability and human flourishing in the food and agriculture sector.”
CoFSA Challenge Fund to Support Regenerative Food System Projects
The CoFSA Challenge Fund, which is about to be launched, intends to support the development of strategic, innovative ideas and solutions to scale up and accelerate progress toward the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through the transformation of food systems, which is critical to achieving the UN’s SDGs.
The Challenge Fund focuses on cultivating inner capacities for regenerative food systems. This constitutes a new field of practice that requires testing and innovation to identify, develop and nurture potentially transformative solutions.
In this first round of calls for proposals, UNDP will support approximately four pilot projects of up to USD 20,000.
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Conscious Food System Links Supply Chain
A conscious food system is a holistic approach to the well-being of people and ecosystems, and where there is a connection and awareness between stakeholders across the whole supply chain, says Helmy Abouleish, SEKEM’s CEO. He heads the holistic, sustainable development community established in 1977 by his father, Dr Ibrahim Abouleish, in the Egyptian desert.
According to UNDP, to transform the systems that harm people and the planet and how food is produced and consumed, “We need to look beyond the problems’ symptoms and even systems’ patterns and structures, at what fundamentally drives the systems.”
Consciousness and mental models, or regenerative mindsets and cultures, are increasingly recognized as the key to unlocking systems change in food and agriculture. To this end, CoFSA applies consciousness approaches to technical solutions to support the cultivation and consideration of inner capacities based on the premise that sustainable change comes from within.
Christine Wamsler, Professor of Sustainability Science at LUND University, emphasizes that there is “increasing scientific consensus that creating sustainable, regenerative systems do not only require a change in our external worlds. Instead, it has to go hand-in-hand with a fundamental shift in our relationships — in the way we think about ourselves, each other, and life as a whole.”
Graphic representation of the Conscious Food Systems Alliance (CoFSA) concept. Credit: UNDP/CoFSA
Similarly, senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Otto Scharmer, stresses, “You cannot change a system unless you change the mindsets or the consciousness of the people who are enacting that system.”
At the heart of it, mindful eating and activating transformation from the inside is a recognition that changing behavior is, at times, more about identity, emotions, and connections than data and analyses in the same way elections are campaigned and won against a backdrop of long-held beliefs and opinions.
Question Impact of Consumer Choices
“I think today, whatever you eat, however you dress, you need to ask yourself where they come from, what kind of impact they are giving back to the Mother Earth, cultural, economic, and spiritual environment,” says Tashka Yawanawá, Chief of the Yawanawá that has survived for centuries in the Brazilian rainforests.
Awareness of the people and processes in food and agriculture systems aligns with indigenous wisdom and is at the heart of the approach taken by the Yawanawá people. For instance, Tashka Yawanawá says: “When somebody drinks the acai collected and produced by the Yawanawá, they’re helping protect 200,000 acres of land.”
“They are also supporting the preservation of our language, our culture, our cultural and spiritual manifestation. Making that link gives value to where you source these products from … when you buy acai made by Yawanawá, you have an awareness that you’re supporting conscious food.”
UNDP stresses that farmers’ lives depend on being seen as human beings, not just economic agents, and says it is “Time to build safe, reflective and connecting spaces to engage in the deep conversations we need for right relationships to replace market rules.”
In the world of conscious thinking and mindful eating, everyone has a role.
A marker trader at a vegetable stall in the village of El-Maadi near Cairo with heaps of fresh vegetables. CoFSA aims to renew lost ties between producers, the foods they grow, cooks, and consumers. Credit: Gavin Bell
Teresa Corção, founder of Instituto Maniva, a non-profit in Brazil that values traditional food knowledge and renews the ties lost between producers, the foods they grow, cooks, and consumers, says chefs have a critical role in listening more to the people who grow the food.
“I think we all see now more and more we need other ways of both changing ourselves and helping others change the way they think in order for us to have the right mindsets to make choices that are more sustainable,” says Andrew Bovarnick, UNDP’s Food, and Agricultural Commodity Systems, Global Head.
CoFSA is built on bringing consciousness to food systems to support the transition to a holistic, bio-regional approach and creating productive landscapes of regeneration.
That consciousness can help restore the balance in food systems between food production, conservation, and well-being, support the uptake of agroecological practices which regenerate the soil, and strengthen the capacity of food to distribute wealth and well-being in communities.
