Nairobi Food System Strategy Outcomes - Increasing Production, Stabilising Supply, Reducing Losses, and Ensuring Consumer Welfare - Nairobi, Kenya

Creating a food strategy to attain food security while safeguarding commercial interests
Collaboration between City and University to optimise the Strategy’s impact
Identifying food system challenges through the City County Food System Strategy

Nairobi’s food system is largely informal making it a difficult system to assess and monitor. Moreover, the current supply chain is long and inefficient, leading to high-priced food. Therefore, Nairobi launched the Nairobi City County Food System Strategy in 2022. The overall objective of this strategy is “to attain consistent food security for city residents while safeguarding the commercial interests of food industry entrepreneurs.”Nairobi’s food system is informal and faces many challenges, such as low food production, inefficient food distribution, and high amounts of food waste. This strategy helped to identify these challenges and coordinate actions to tackle them. The strategy has formulated four objectives to reach their goal. These are: increasing food production; stabilising food supply and incomes; reducing food losses; and providing good welfare of food consumers. The private sector will primarily oversee the operations of the food system, with the county government contributing to development interventions and capacity-building activities. Additionally, the county government will administer public food services including regulation, extension services, and information dissemination.

Citation

Food Action Cities. (2023, September 5). Nairobi City County Food System Strategy – Nairobi, Kenya, Food Action Cities. https://foodactioncities.org/case-studies/nairobi-city-county-food-system-strategy–nairobi-kenya

Photo: by Ninara through https://libguides.wintec.ac.nz/APA7/creative-commons-images

The action and its aims

The overall objective of this strategy is “to attain consistent food security for city residents while safeguarding the commercial interests of food industry entrepreneurs.” It will do so by increasing food production, stabilising food supply and incomes, reducing food losses, and providing good welfare of food consumers.

When it was introduced

The Nairobi City County Food System Strategy was introduced in 2022 and has a 5-year implementation plan.

Why it was needed

Nairobi’s food system is largely informal making it a difficult system to assess and monitor. Moreover, the current supply chain is long and inefficient, leading to high-priced food. Local food production constitutes 1-18% of the total food needs of the city and is thus unable to provide enough nutritious and high-quality food for each city resident, nor can it give commercial participants in food production, processing, and distribution good returns on their investments.^[1]

Who initiated it, who is involved

This strategy was created by Nairobi City County. The data that was used came from studies conducted by Jomo Kenyatta University for Agriculture and Technology with the financial and technical support of the FAO. C40 Cities provided technical support. The private sector will have an important role in the food system’s operation.