Criteria for High Quality Food Systems Foresight in Africa: Practical Guide Launch event

Africa’s food systems are entering a decisive era. This era is shaped by accelerating climate risks, demographic transitions, technological change, geopolitical uncertainty, and persistent structural inequalities. These realities demand that African institutions move beyond reactive planning toward anticipatory, evidence-driven, and systems-oriented decision-making, capable of managing risk, strengthening resilience, and guiding long-term transformation.

The field of foresight in food systems, climate action and socio-environmental systems is rapidly expanding. There is a growing need for systemic change facilitation, transformation thinking and anticipatory policy in a context of frequent, recurring and deeply interconnected crises across the world. There is increasing interest of governments, civil society organisations and institutions in the use of foresight as a way to support systemic change initiatives and for navigation of complex situations. Now, the next step is to try to better understand and assess what constitutes high quality and impactful foresight for food systems transformation.

This guide, developed by Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), University of Oxford – Environmental Change Institute, and Foresight4Food, proposes nine Quality Criteria for enhancing the potential of foresight for food systems transformation and unpacks these. Furthermore, the Guide helps navigate the challenge of demonstrating the added value of foresight in transformative processes, by exploring how to apply Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning.

Don’t miss this opportunity to expand your perspective and join in the discussion!