Food Africa

FOOD AFRICA

FOOD AFRICA How can we build a transparent food safety value chain through co-creation with the University of Nairobi?

About 90% of population in Kenya make their living on the agriculture.

Yet, Kenya is the country with the highest incidence of acute toxicity in food possibly ever reported. One reason is high numbers of aflatoxins, a poisonous substance produced by certain molds, causing the long-term development of lung cancer and children growth disease.

APPROACH

This project is a joint initiative with University of Nairobi as part of PBL (Problem-Based-Learning) East Africa projects facilitated by Aalto Global Impact for creating sustainable impacts. The team is a multicultural and multidisciplenary team of 5 Aalto and 5 Nairobi University students.

THE TEAM

// Problem Based Learning MAARIA TIENSIVU Project Manager and Design Research Lead

LOI TRAN

LAURA SILVANTO

MASAHIRO KUNIEDA

HILDA RUIJS

Communication and Business Model Design Lead

Documentation and PR Lead

Technology and Systems Management Lead

Design and Networks Lead

MISSION Our mission is to understand the underlining reasons behind the food safety issue in Kenya, and to conceptualize an innovative solution to the general food safety in Kenya.

// Clients

Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE) Finnish Food Safety Authority (Evira)

// Team Kenya

Duncan, Spencer, Unelker, Benjamin, Claire

// Mentors

Vilma Hämäläinen, Elina Lehikoinen Anne Atambo, Peter Okech, Herbert Wamalwa

This approach is needed to solve within a very complex food system : Many stakeholders are involved and if you change one thing in the food system, it’s impact elsewhere is hard to predict. The fieldtrip with our Kenyan Colleagues was key to understand the complexity of the problem that addresses many stakeholders in the value chain.

Field trip visits to all sizes of: # dairy & maize farm # feed producers # consumers in retail stores

// CO-design

The multidisciplenary & multicultural team allowed for unique collaboration. Design thinking methods allowed for deep contextual understanding within the systemic boundaries.

FOOD AFRICA

FOOD SAFETY PLATFORM A multistakeholder platform could address many of the ‘Solution Spaces’. Key focus areas are raising awareness on food safety issues and educating safe farming & production practices, meanwhile setting up valuable partnerships that holistically address the food safety issues by building trust and transparency across the value chain.

Many concepts have been created and below we would like to showcase one.

Farmmatch, one idea our client LUKE was interested in, because of its potential to extend the platform with more features that can be ‘plugged-in’ easily. E.g. Testing When high-quality standards are introduced, the platform stimulates farmers to produce higher quality goods in return for a secure income.

Ultimately this pushes the standards upwards in the food safety value chain, where high quality foods are available to consumers in Kenya.

EXAMPLE | Matchmaking stakeholders

CHALLENGES # no safe products are available to the consumer because there is no control in the informal value chain # no affordable testing of toxins is available + no incentive is present

SOLUTION SPACES These were found during the field trip and presented + validated at the Nairobi Innovation Week.

Features for the final concept are based on these.

# farmers and producers are undereducated and unaware which leads to inefficient production practices # climate change impacts production no rain = no food / heavy rains