As urbanization accelerates globally, food systems face mounting challenges in ensuring healthy, sustainable, and affordable diets for growing city populations. In Ethiopia, where urban areas like Addis Ababa are expanding rapidly, addressing these challenges has become a critical priority. Professor Charles Spillane, a seasoned expert in agri-food research from the University of Galway in Ireland, sheds light on the EcoFoodSystems project—a groundbreaking initiative funded by the European Union and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). 

In an exclusive interview with Capital, Professor Spillane discusses how the EcoFoodSystems project aims to transform urban food systems in Addis Ababa and Hanoi, Vietnam, through research-driven solutions that integrate nutrition, sustainability, and affordability. He highlights the importance of collaborative efforts between stakeholders, including government bodies, NGOs, and private sector actors, to achieve impactful changes in food systems. 

From tackling malnutrition and obesity to addressing climate resilience and environmental footprints, the EcoFoodSystems project is poised to provide actionable insights and tools for policymakers and practitioners alike. This conversation delves into the project’s objectives, expected outcomes, and its role in shaping sustainable food systems for urban regions worldwide. Excerpts;

Capital: What is EcoFoodSystems project?

Charles Spillane: EcoFood Systems that is funded by the European Union and also the International Fund for Agriculture Development, which is an agricultural development bank based here in Ethiopia. So our EcoFood Systems project is a project that’s focusing on the challenge of how diets are changing in cities, particularly in urban areas. And so we’re focused on two city regions. So the city region of Addis Ababa, but also the city region of Hanoi in Vietnam.

And what we’re doing is we’re trying to do research with the actors, if you want to call it that, within the food system of Ethiopia, but also within the food system more specifically within Addis Ababa city region to try to do research that would help with transitions of diets of the consumers in Addis Ababa towards diets that are healthier, more sustainable and more affordable. And this is a big challenge, how to achieve all of those three things.

They’re all desirable, but trying to achieve them all, there are different sectors trying to pursue some of them. So the nutrition and health sector may pursue nutrition and health, the agriculture sector may pursue sustainability and agriculture, the economic sector may pursue affordability of diets and incomes, and so they’re all interrelated in some ways we’re working very closely with the Ethiopian Public Health Institute. which is under the Ministry of Health within Ethiopia and they’re the body mandated.

So really we’re a research project to work with the stakeholders in the food system to try and do pieces of research and also try to see if we can work with the stakeholders to identify decision support tools that would help them to make better decisions, faster decisions, more informed decisions. So that’s really what we’re trying to do.

Capital: What are the key expected outcomes of the EcoFoodSystems project, and how will its success be measured in improving the diets of Addis Ababa’s citizens?

Charles: So a research project can generate new knowledge or it can improve existing knowledge synthesize existing evidence and we need to do that in a manner that is demand driven so that it is what is needed by the stakeholders. the ultimate, we will generate what are called research outputs which are the research will generate findings, some of those could be tools for decision making, some of those could be policy briefs, some of those could be data sets and so forth and we will do that with the stakeholders.

But then our stakeholders are really the entities that take that forward to have the impact on the diet. So we need to work with the entities that are interacting with the diets of the consumers in Addis Ababa, and particularly those whose diets are those who are most marginalized nutritionally, that we call it that.

So on that side we have people who suffer from undernutrition, so they don’t have enough either foods in a calorie context or enough energy or they don’t have enough nutrients, so they don’t have a healthy diet and they lack access.

And then on the other side, there is also a growing problem of people becoming overweight and ultimately obese, which can lead to chronic disease problems like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. And that is on the rise in all countries, urban and rural, within households, many communities. And that’s a challenge for Ethiopia as a nation but for all nations. And again, so there’s a real challenge I think for all of us as consumers of food to be assisted by the stakeholders so that we can have, we can eat a healthy diet, but it should be affordable, but it also should be sustainable in terms of the planet and it should also be resilient to climate change.

Capital: Given the complexity of food systems, what are the biggest challenges you anticipate in achieving a transition towards healthier, more sustainable, and affordable diets in Addis Ababa?

Charles: There are challenges for the different sectors of how they can work better together. So that this could be the different ministries. But the government working towards inter-ministerial partnerships through the food systems transformation. Ethiopia is a leader in food systems transformation that has a pathway and there’s a policy direction and a plan that all of the actors need to follow essentially. But having said that the out everybody wants the same outcomes yeah but they all approach it in different ways but there could be benefits from them working more closely together for the same objectives and then in some instances there might be cases where one group is pursuing something but it has a negative effect on the other outcome you want so they need to there’s challenge of communication and working together across sectors and those sectors could be public and private.

It could also be the education system is particularly important but next generation so like nutritional literacy for the next generation to what extent they have an understanding of what is a healthy diet in the city because if they don’t then there’s a possibility that the city has a certain proportion of people who don’t have good health and that’s in some ways connected in with the sustainability of the city also.

Capital: How will the research findings from the EcoFoodSystems project be integrated into public health policies and programs in Ethiopia to combat malnutrition?

Charles: The research project is informed by our partners who are the stakeholders and so we conduct research that is prioritized as the purpose of this project is to priorities’ what is the highest priority research that the project should do or should be done in general. So we do that research so that it can be adopted by the stakeholders, by our partners such as EPHI, such as the Ministry, such as the NGOs, such as private sector value chains and so forth. That essentially we conduct pieces of research of many different policy options or directions or indeed we provide tools that could allow for better decision making.

Capital: With 70% of the world’s population expected to live in urban areas by 2050, how does this workshop contribute to creating a sustainable food model for other growing city regions?

Charles: The very fact that 70 % of the world’s population will live in urban areas by 2050 means that while it’s consumed in the cities, the data is grown in the countryside. So most of the vast majority of the comes from the countryside. And it from the countryside within the country, but it also comes from the countryside that we import and export to other countries. So it’s very important that there’s a strong connectivity and planning of the diets, how the diets of the cities go, with how much produce they need to communicate. They’re not distant, there’s a connection we need to bring the farm to the city and the city to the farm. In a sense, they need to connect better.

Capital: How important is the focus on urban food systems in addressing global food security and nutrition challenges, and what role do you see projects like EcoFoodSystems playing in this?

Charles: So when you talk about the urban food security, within the urban area there will be some people that are undernourished, some people that are headed in the direction of being overweight or possibly obese. That can happen within a household for young people, old people, and middle-aged people.

Capital: How can research projects like EcoFoodSystems support you in making your practices more sustainable and contributing to healthier diets in the city?

Charles: it is possible to calculate the environmental footprint of anything that is produced, whether it’s a food or anything else. And so you can calculate the amount of carbon footprint can be calculated, the water footprint, how much land is used to make the object. It can be a food, can be teff, can be tomatoes, can be oranges, bananas, whatever you want. So they can all be calculated. Some have higher footprints than others, but then the nutritionists will look at these and say some have higher nutritional levels than others. And so there’s a balancing act to make it a diet that is appropriate to the culture is that people find tasty at what to eat. That is ideally with the lowest footprint but the highest nutrition.

So our project we’re working with the agriculture side of things in terms of the supply, the environmental footprint of the supply, but also in the nutrition side because you can supply things that have low environmental footprint but they might not be nutritious.

Capital: How does the EcoFoodSystems project plan to bridge the gap between research findings and practical changes in the food systems of Addis Ababa?

Charles: The gap between research and practice, it’s really important that we do research that is demanded and prioritized by the stakeholders and that’s why we brought a very diverse group of stakeholders together to work as Ethiopian stakeholders in prioritizing what research they consider is a priority to do. When the research is prioritized, then we can work with the stakeholders to do the research. They prioritize that they would adopt and that they would implement to achieve the outcomes of changing,

Capital: Climate change poses a significant threat to food security. How will the EcoFoodSystems project ensure that the solutions developed are resilient to these challenges?

Charles: so we’re in everybody is in the midst of a climate crisis the planet is warming up and it’s going to lead to adverse weather events which are higher in frequency, more intense over time and so shocks will intensify as a result of climate change but on the agricultural system and other systems.

So we collaborate, we brought a lot of colleagues here today who work on climate modeling about future climates and so future climates can be modeled and they can be interpreted to understand whether some crops will be suitable to grow in the future are the crops not and how that might affect the diets as well. So we can begin to think about the future diets in a future climate.

Another part of that is that Ethiopia, like all other countries, has a national climate plan which is about it can be about reducing emissions in sectors of the economy or least green transitions for sectors of the economy and then also about adaptation or making systems of parts of the economy more resilient to climate shocks. So that really needs to be done in an integrated way so we work with the climate modeling community and the climate adaptation and emissions reduction community to provide supports in that direction.