Small is powerful! (when it comes to changing food systems)

by Alex Rees/

Small is powerful! (when it comes to changing food systems)

Alex Rees

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Change is imperative... but how?

I warmly welcome the near unity in voices across the world, calling for our food systems to better serve people and the planet. This will be the major cry too, at the UN Food Systems Summit in New York this month. But two important questions to consider are: ‘How to achieve this?’ and ‘What more do we need to know?’

Like many organisations, Wasafiri is actively seeking ways to help catalyse transformational shifts in food systems. Our desired outcome is simple: we want healthier and more sustainable foods to be grown and eaten everywhere.

One means of transforming the food supply is to help those who run micro and small food enterprises to flourish. After all, they produce most of the healthy, sustainable, local foods for local markets. These are often used by low-income consumers.

Kenya is a case in point; as a country with strong market activity and therefore opportunity for entrepreneurial people, the country provides an important barometer for what is possible.

But surely, these tiny businesses are too small to make a difference? Ants or termites provide a useful analogy. Individually their impact is minute as they go about their work – but taken collectively a colony of ants or brood of termites can create dramatic physical change in the environment. Collective action counts. Small can be powerful when harnessed.

Small businesses count

Let’s get a bit more specific and evidence-based. Harnessing the domination of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) is essential for meaningful change of national food systems in Africa.

MSMEs constitute the key part of the food environment that enables or constrains consumers’ access to food. They are big players in the production, processing, and retailing of fruits and vegetables, animal-source foods, and cereals and legumes in Africa1. They play an essential role in food supply chains and in ensuring food and nutrition security of most low-and middle-income countries (LMICs)2.

In Kenya, MSMEs in the agri-food sector play a key role in enhancing food and nutrition security and constitute a significant part of the economy including in urban areas3.

A 2016 MSME survey by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics found that 96% of the surveyed enterprises were microenterprises. In addition, the Kenya Integrated Household Baseline Survey (KIHBS) 2015/2016 data indicates that about 96% of healthy and sustainable foods consumed by households was sourced from micro and small enterprise – a combination of open-air market traders, general shops, kiosks, specialized shops, other households, and roadside or hawkers.

The point is hopefully clear: many food businesses are small and taken together, small counts!

Do we know how to help small food businesses?

The barrier to making better progress is that the role and dynamics of micro and small enterprises within the food system in Kenya are not well understood, and this is particularly true when it comes to a fundamental question: how can we support micro and small businesses produce healthier and more sustainable foods at a large enough scale that is accessible and affordable to mostly low-income Kenyan consumers?

The answer is no, not yet.

Answering this question is an important challenge that Wasafiri is responding to in Kenya. We are working together with Village Enterprise and Shack Dwellers International on a two-year research programme that started in April 2021. We are supported in this by the IDRC – who, in turn, is supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Canadian Government.

The focus is how to better shape an ecosystem of programmes, policies and interventions that can nudge small businesses to contribute towards greater volumes of good quality, nutritious foods to meet demand in the market.

Generating the knowledge that is needed

While managing COVID-19 risks we are excited to start this research with micro and small business owners in Kibera, Nairobi’s largest informal settlement, in September 2021. Our efforts will evolve over time to empower micro and small business leaders and those that establish the policy environment for such businesses in three counties: West Pokot, Bungoma and Nairobi.

The findings will inform thinking locally, nationally and regionally and we are rallying stakeholders who may be interested to engage with us on this journey. So, feel free to get in touch: alex@wasafirihub.com or george@wasafirihub.com.

This research will not be ready for the UN Food Systems Summit on 23 September 2021, so stakeholders must work with what is available. Policymakers and influencers can take account of world-class work by Wasafiri in July 2021, on behalf of the UN Food Systems Summit Secretariat, that engaged and sought the voices of small businesses from 137 countries in how to help them scale up their wonderful efforts to transform our food systems.

Led by my fabulous colleague Ian Randall with a wonderful team – see A Small Business Agenda and here is his blog.

  1. Demmler, 2020
  2. Nordhagen et al., 2021
  3. Owuor, 2020; Githiri et al., 2016

Photo by Brett Sayles from Pexels

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Small businesses are the quiet revolutionaries needed by the UN Food Systems Summit

by Ian Randall/

Small businesses are the quiet revolutionaries needed by the UN Food Systems Summit

Ian Randall

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Our food systems must become more nourishing, sustainable, equitable and resilient. This is the imperative set by the United Nations Food Systems Summit taking place on 23 September 2021.

Food systems touch every aspect of human existence, affecting the health of our bodies, our environment, our economies, and our cultures. Every day, each person on the planet plays their part in nourishing humanity; and, within decades, we must feed nine billion people.

This endeavour is a miracle of human collaboration, and yet, in critical ways, we are failing. Too many are underfed, overfed or poorly fed. We are degrading vital natural capital and biodiversity. We are ill-prepared for shocks such as pandemics and a changing climate.

Poverty is a daily burden for so many who labour to provide our food. Over the last year, the Summit process has brought the world together to ask how we must collectively act to transform the way we produce, consume and think about food.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) constitute at least half the food system. Each country is different, but SMEs usually make up over 90% of businesses in the agri-food sector, create half the sector’s economic value, provide more than half its jobs, and handle more than half the food consumed. They are incredibly diverse, from bakeries to farm suppliers, coffee co-ops to digital start-ups. Some will grow exponentially to become renowned giants, but the vast majority are hidden heroes labouring to provide food from their niche in the food system.

SMEs must be at the heart of efforts to provide “Good Food for All”. Lift the lid on the food system, and SMEs are everywhere. Sector transformation is simply unimaginable without them. At the centre of SMEs are entrepreneurs, who together make billions of decisions that shape the future of food.

They are pioneers, innovators, and influencers. On a daily basis, they acutely feel the global tensions: how do we provide our end-consumers with affordable food, whilst ensuring it is nutritious, paying fair wages, maintaining our natural capital, and being ready for shocks?

On behalf of the United Nations, Wasafiri was contracted to ensure the needs and potential of SMEs were brought into the Summit process. We asked thousands of food SMEs and their expert supporters, “How to boost the role of SMEs in providing good food for all?” Their response, with input from 137 countries, was inspiring and compelling.

Food SMEs revealed themselves as quiet revolutionaries, working tirelessly to transform food systems in every corner of the planet. Listening carefully, we heard a shared vision for rebalanced food systems that sustain past efficiency gains, whilst no longer compromising nutrition, natural capital, equity, and resilience. Their stories tell of their collective commitment to drive positive change in multiple ways:

  • Integrating markets to reduce poverty and hunger.
    Creating opportunities that improve equity.
  • Innovating and scaling solutions for nutrition and sustainability.
  • Elevating resilience to shocks, through embedded yet agile business models.
  • Influencing to passionately shape the future of food.

We ran the Summit’s competition to showcase the “Best 50 Small Businesses providing Good Food for All”. Watch this winners’ video to get inspired by the passionate, values-driven, innovative entrepreneurs in the ascendency.

SMEs are ready to reshape our food systems for the better, but this is a formidable challenge. They will only fulfil their potential when support systems, market incentives, power dynamics, and cultural norms shift in their favour. The ask by SMEs is for cross-sector actors to create conditions for purpose-driven SMEs to flourish.

Every country and value chain is different, and so are the constraints they present to SMEs. Hence, SMEs need the Food System Summit to catalyse action by coalitions working at national-level or within specific value chains. Listening to the SMEs in each discrete context will highlight priority actions to boost their contribution as change agents. Three pathways need considering when integrating food SMEs into the prioritisation, design and governance of efforts to transform food systems.

Pathway 1: Create a business ecosystem in which food SMEs thrive

The food sector is often burdensome for SMEs. Running a food SME is hard, and market elements are frequently wrong-sized for them. When food entrepreneurs have a business environment that gives them a fair chance to compete in the market, they then thrive to the benefit of consumers, producers, communities, nature, and investors.

Opportunities to act:

  • Reduce the cost of doing business by improving physical and digital infrastructure, regulations, and the rule of law.
  • Improve access to finance.
  • Ease SME graduation from the informal to the formal sector.
  • Leverage the power of large market actors.
  • Target business support at food SMEs.

Pathway 2: Incentivise businesses to provide “Good Food for All”

The best businesses are not always the most competitive, so they struggle to scale up. Most consumers currently prioritise price above all other factors, and good businesses cannot out-compete those who deliver their products whilst externalising their cost to public health, natural capital, or social equity. The food system will continue to fail us until these incentives change.

Opportunities to act:

  • Ensure prices reflect the true cost of food, while safeguarding affordability.
  • Create consumer demand for “good food”.
  • Fast-track innovative entrepreneurs.

Pathway 3: Increase the power of food SMEs within sector planning

Small businesses have quiet and isolated voices. Compared to government or large businesses, they are relatively underpowered in their ability to collectively influence decision-making, regulations, resource allocation, and cultural values within food systems. Only once power dynamics change can we expect to make progress on rebalancing food systems in favour of the SMEs pioneering good food for all.

Opportunities to act:

  • Elevate the voice of SMEs.
  • Structure SMEs into dynamic networks.
  • Plan and invest according to context-specific priorities.

These messages were presented by Wasafiri in the report “A Small Business Agenda” and in a session at the Pre-Summit that is available to watch.

The Summit convenes imminently. UN member states will share plans to forge better food systems. They are far more likely to achieve their worthy goals if they work in partnership with the small businesses that are already revolutionising our food day-in-day-out.

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