Food security

The Global Alliance for the Future of Food provides a case exemplar of incorporating systems thinking, complexity understandings, and developmental evaluation into systems transformation work. This trans-formational engagement is not just rhetoric but is deeply embedded as the focus of the Global Alliance’s ongoing work. It is, importantly, predicated on in-depth and long-term cocreation and collaboration between alliance leadership and an independent external evaluator.

As part of preparation and building momentum for the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit more than 900 Independent Dialogues have taken place around the world. These Summit Dialogues aim to offer a seat at the table to all interested stakeholders, giving them an opportunity to debate, collaborate, and provide input into deliberations on the future of food.  

In 2021, UN Secretary-General António Guterres will convene a Food Systems Summit as part of the Decade of Action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The Summit aims to support transformation of the way the world produces, consumes and thinks about food.

In writing about transformation in Blue Marble Evaluation, I quoted Million Belay, coordinator of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, who said: “At last there is a realization that change, fundamental change in the way we are living, is needed.” I met Million at

This report presents the key highlights and contributions from the conference ‘Monitoring and Evaluation for Inclusive and Sustainable Food Systems’. This conference was held on 3-4 April 2019 in Wageningen, the Netherlands and was the twelfth annual ‘M&E on the Cutting Edge’ conference. This event was organised by Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation (WCDI) in collaboration with Wageningen Economic Research and the Food & Business Knowledge Platform.