Page 16 - University of Pretoria Research Review 2017

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Supporting food security policy change in Africa
Sheryl Hendriks, Institute for Food, Nutrition and Well-being
The resolve of African governments to meeting their national development priorities and international obligations and commitments towards addressing hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in Africa has never been stronger.
Emerging evidence from international studies shows that there is an overall reduction in the proportion of people suffering from food insecurity on the continent. However, leaders recognise that much more needs to be done to speed up the rate of reduction. Driven by the comprehensive agenda of the SDGs, Africa’s Agenda 2063 and the 2014 Malabo Declaration on accelerated agricultural growth and transformation for shared prosperity and improved livelihoods, African countries are actively engaged in policy review and strategic development planning efforts.
Led by Professor Sheryl Hendriks, Director of the Institute for Food, Nutrition and Well-being or IFNuW, a team of UP researchers had the opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills developed through their policy research work on food security and nutrition to support policy reform processes in a number of countries in West and East Africa. The research work was initiated through the UP Institutional Research Theme on
Food, Nutrition and Well-being launched in 2012. The translation of this earlier work, funded by the USAID Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy, has been carried out in partnership with colleagues from Michigan State University, the International Food Policy Research Institute, and the Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System.
The UP team has developed a number of policy assessment tools to help country teams review existing policies and design new strategies for food security,
as well as in supporting countries to develop a deeper understanding of ways in which to mainstream gender in development policy. The African Union has integrated some of this work into guidance notes and toolkits.
One of the key contributions to the science of policymaking has been the development and testing of a new theoretical framework to understand how policy change occurs (or does not). The Kaleidoscope Model of policy change brings together a vast but dispersed knowledge base derived from empirical policy analysis, political economy literature and theoretical scholarship on policy processes. The model was validated through studying 38 episodes of policy change over a 50-year period in Malawi, South Africa and Zambia. A paper comparing the policy change episodes for fertilizer and micronutrients in Zambia was accepted for publication in the journal World Development. The model has already been adopted by key international agencies such as the World Bank.
The team has helped governments to better align
their national development plans, sectoral policies
and the monitoring and evaluation frameworks of medium-term strategic plans. The value of this work has been particularly evident in the refinement by national working groups designing five-year strategies for agriculture and food security in Malawi and Liberia, and in the adoption of suggestions to improve Malawi’s Draft National Nutrition Policy 2016–2020.
In 2017, the lessons from these studies were published as technical working papers, policy briefs shared with African governments, widely read Conversation Africa articles, online blogs and journal articles, including articles in PLOS one and the South African Journal of Clinical Nutrition.