African Food Innovations:

Partnering for A sustainable future

From creating best-fit agri-food technologies and reducing environmental footprint to designing new business models, the INCiTiS-FOOD project will create an inclusive food system in African cities and towns.

Get Started

INCiTiS FOOD

INtegrated and Circular Technologies for Sustainable city region FOOD systems in Africa (INCiTiS-FOOD)

The INCiTiS-FOOD project will co-create circular agri-food technologies, practices, and business models centering upon soilless crop farming, recirculating aquaculture systems, and insect farming. These circular agri-food technologies have been considered suitable for the context of African cities because they do not require great access to land, water, or other resources allowing Africa to thrive.

Current African city region food systems are failing to deliver desired outcomes. Around a quarter of those residing in African cities remain food insecure and malnourished.

Within 4 years, INCiTiS-FOOD will improve food and nutrition security in African city regions and reduce the food-system-related environmental footprint while contributing to circularity. Furthermore, the project will empower communities by creating opportunities for them in agri-food supply and value chains, and by achieving environmental justice through transformative food policies. Interdisciplinary research, integrated best-fit technologies, stakeholder led action, capacity-building, research-practitioner-policy, collaborative engagement, and Europe-Africa partnership will be foundation for achieving those goals.

A core part of INCiTiS-FOOD are 8 living labs located in 6 countries across 3 African regions: East: Kenya; West: Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone; Central: Cameroon, Gabon. Living labs will be turned into incubators and accelerators of innovation that will be used beyond the project’s duration.

The INCiTiS-FOOD project will follow a Lean Start-up Methodology to achieve minimum viable products (MVPs). These MVPs are expected to reach a sufficiently high technological, societal, and business readiness level in 2 years into the 4-year project. The MVPs are further validated in a demonstration phase (800-1000+ start-ups and scalable small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs) on the basis of 2 Open Calls for the Cascade Fund. Beneficiaries of the Cascade Fund will be surveyed to generate empirical evidence on the co-benefits of the INCiTiSFOOD project technologies and business models, which will guide urban food policy roadmaps.

“We will set up 8 Living Labs in 6 African countries. Living labs will be turned into incubators of innovation and their mission will be to improve food and nutrition security in African city regions. Since current African food systems are failing to deliver desired outcomes and a quarter of those who inhabit African cities remain food insecure and malnourished, we need to redefine and modernize the production. There are different methods to prevent food instability: availability of nutritious and safe food through local production, food access - affordability, food utilization, reduction of food waste, and food stability at all times.”