UCT Sustainability and the SDGs 2022 - Report - Page 11
The Nourished Child
Children’s health and development are profoundly
affected by the foods they eat. But in many developing
countries, including South Africa, children are not
receiving the diets they need to thrive. The Nourished
Child, a project of researchers from the African Centre
for Cities (ACC) located in UCT’s Faculty of Engineering
and the Built Environment, City University London, and
Stellenbosch University, shows how the environment in
which children live affects what foods they eat. To realise
children’s rights to healthy, available, affordable and
nutritious food, it is necessary to understand how diets
are impacted by the food, education, social protection,
and built infrastructure systems.
This project ran from March 2020 to September 2022
and included work with local communities in Cape Town
as well as policymakers and local officials.
The research findings were used by UNICEF for their
2022 report: A systems approach to improving children’s
diets.
The UCT research group also reviewed all policy and
programme interventions that intersected with the
nutrition outcomes of children. This spanned five policy
areas: the food system, the health system, the social
system, the urban system, and the social services
system. An Intervention Scan report was then compiled
for the use of local government officials and published in
March 2022.
The Seed and Knowledge
Initiative
Seed embodies life, power, and culture. It provides
the mainstay for Africa’s 500 million small-scale
farmers and is at the heart of rich and varied cultures.
But as the world’s food and agricultural systems
become increasingly industrialised, homogenised and
privatised, seed is under threat. UCT’s Research Chair
on the Environmental and Social Dimensions of the
Bio-economy is a founding member of the Seed and
Knowledge Initiative (SKI), a regional partnership of 15
organisations committed to securing food sovereignty in
southern Africa.
The initiative started in 2013 and continues to grow its
network and impact.
In 2022, SKI continued to work with smallholder
farmers in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia
to become more seed, food and nutritionally secure
through the support of farmer-led seed systems and
agroecological production.
Research projects undertaken by students of the Chair
feed into the SKI knowledge base, contribute to ongoing
learning and innovation within the SKI to shape strategies
and work on the ground. This in turn directly impacts the
lives of thousands of smallholder farmers, bringing them
closer to a food-secure reality.
Left: UCT has feeding projects
across its campuses to
address student hunger.
Sustainability and the SDGs 2022 – 11
