Nakuru, March 2024 – A follow-up to the FoSTr Nakuru Roundtable held in Nov 2023, the Foresight4Food FoSTr team headed to Nakuru once again to facilitate a scenario development workshop with the county’s food system stakeholders.
Building on the highly energetic commitment of a select group of the Nakuru Foresight Technical Working Group, the FoSTr team along with 40 participants delved deeper into understanding the trends, risks, and critical uncertainties that will shape the future of the Nakuru food system. This group of stakeholders comprised of civil society, private sector, community leaders, farmer leaders, researchers, and county officials.
The workshop commenced with presentations from The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) on the current state of the Nakuru food system, followed by Egerton University presenting the progress of the Nakuru Living Lab. Additionally, some community members shared about the Kabazi Ward ‘Whole of Government – Whole of Society’ initiative.
Later in the workshop, stakeholders brainstormed about trends and critical uncertainties that would shape the Nakuru food system of the future. Based on this in-depth discussion, the FoSTr team clustered and deepened this analysis and highlighted 4 critical uncertainties – the business structure of Nakuru’s agri-food system, the extent of adoption of healthy diets, the extent of environmental sustainability and climate resilience, and the main destination of markets. A wild card was added regarding the development of global ‘novel food’ markets. Based on these critical uncertainties, 5 scenarios were developed and the participants discussed the various implications and entry points to push the Nakuru food system in new directions.
The FoSTr team plans to return to Nakuru in May 2024 to organize a workshop on systems change, in order to generate reliable pathways for change. This will include discussions with the wider Nakuru food systems community as well as engagement with agri-food business leaders working in the county.
