How can traditional/indigenous food systems (production, processing and consumption) contribute to nutritious food and reduce food insecurity in Africa?
Researchers need your help to discover traditional/indigenous production, processing and consumption practices and integration into modern food production efforts in Africa.
This project is designed primarily to enhance the impact of the UK STFC’s data science and citizen science work in Africa to benefit users and beneficiaries, both inside and outside the scientific and research community. It does so by developing the first innovative African indigenous knowledge management platform to rescue and share traditional agriculture and food production, processing and consumption techniques, through extensive engagement with smallholder farmers, SMEs, policy and wider stakeholder communities.
This study is initially carried out in Sierra Leone to generate useful data on existing and emerging practices embodied in AIK agriculture and farming practices and develop together with stakeholders a prototype documentation of the knowledge platform. Sierra Leone relies on about 80% of smallholder farming for food production and up to 60% of the country’s labour force is employed in this sector.
Learning from AIK, by investigating what local communities know and have in Sierra Leone, can improve understanding of food production and consumption, particularly in times of stress or shocks affecting the food systems and communities. Thus, the platform will be useful for local populations, research and policy-makers, and it could lead to transformative innovation in the food system, creating a fundamental shift in the way the UK supports sustainable, modern food production efforts in Africa.
The specific objectives are:
To achieve these objectives, we adopt mixed methods involving document analysis, interviews, photo and video diaries and participatory stakeholder workshops both in person and online in Sierra Leone. Under the photo and video diaries, we recruit and train 20 indigenous smallholder farmers and have them make photo and video diaries of their everyday farming and food production, processing and consumption by traditional means.
Farmers are given the freedom to capture what is meaningful to them based on different themes, and interview them individually about how and why they chose the images or videos that they captured. The farmers’ electronic self-recording of their everyday traditional practices through digital devices and active participation in data analysis contribute both to the research itself and engagement around the research.
To make sense of the images/videos taken by indigenous farmers we must carefully analyse them, with the view of establishing the link between African indigenous and scientific knowledge and modern efforts for sustainable food production. To extract meaning from the images/videos, we are interested in interpreting, classifying and categorising the images and videos. We need your help with this task. Your analysis is useful for making alternative and cross-cultural sense of the images and videos and plans for co-developing the interactive, digital, open AIK platform.