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Entries by AFRA
FILM: Desperate Times: Covid, inequality and resilience in South Africa’s food system
The film highlights how COVID-19 regulations affected small-scale farmers, fishers and informal traders in South Africa’s food system – part of The Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) in partnership with the University of Pretoria, AFRA and Masifundise Development Trust research on the Political economy of African food systems supported by IDRC.
SHORT FILMS: COVID-19 impact on women’s economic and livelihood activities
The following short films were documented by Qina Mbokodo, a group of women on farms in uMgungundlovu District Municipality with the support from the Commonwealth Foundation. The films document how COVID-19 significantly reduced women’s economic and livelihood activities, increasing poverty rates and exacerbating food insecurity. Thandi Mchunu, farmworker, her story highlights how wages and social […]
WEBINAR: A Just Recovery: Rebuilding Food Systems after Covid-19 and Unrest in South Africa
This webinar aims to reframe the post-Covid and post-unrest ‘recovery’ discourse to foreground the danger of entrenched corporate power in the food system, and the immediate opportunities to “build back” different and better. This requires an understanding of inequality, power and politics in food systems. On the basis of social dialogues with people who derive […]
Corporate interests calling the shots at UN Food Systems Summit
By Marc Wegerif, Ruth Hall, Nkanyiso Gumede and Ayanda Madlala. The UN Food Systems Summit opening on Thursday, 23 September, has been captured. Why does it matter and what’s to be done – globally, in Africa and in South Africa? Dr Marc Wegerif is a Senior Lecturer and Coordinator of the Development Studies Programme in […]
Research reveals ‘gender bias in farmers relief grant’
Research into the Covid-19 relief fund for small-scale farmers has exposed a couple of issues, including gender bias in the system and processing of the fund. According to Professor Ruth Hall of the University of Western Cape’s Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies, preliminary findings during a field work in Limpopo revealed that men […]
WEBINAR: The COVID relief fund for small-scale farmers, who benefitted and who lost out?
South Africa faced a food crisis before the COVID-19 lockdown from March 2020. The lockdown quickly emerged as not only a health crisis, but a sudden and acute, deeper food crisis. In this webinar hosted by PLAAS, AFRA Director, Laurel Oettle and other panelists discuss the COVID relief fund for small-scale farmers: who benefitted, who […]
Household garden helps farm worker put food on the table
Makhosi Nkosi, 58 is a farm worker from Hillerman Farm in Wartburg about 50 km from Pietermaritzburg. Her household of eight have to live on R2040 a month, which is less than a living wage and much lower than what is needed for a household to buy a basic basket of nutritious food. And, of course, […]