Rirhandzu Marivate, SAUFFT Programmes Manager, featured at the 2024 WTM Africa session, “Local indigenous food identities – contributions to sustainability transitions.”
This panel draws attention to Southern African Food identities and traditions. Visitors to the region (as well as locals!) have little opportunity to experience local tastes and flavours. Forgotten indigenous ingredients and traditions that became invisible or shamed during the colonial years are finding their way into the forefront – both for the way they celebrate reclaimed identities and the flavours of the land, as well as for the invaluable contribution that resilient and adaptive local foods can bring people and the planet in these times of climate variability. This panel brings the voices of several contributors to this transition out of invisibility.
As an experienced socioecologist and regenerative food systems practitioner, Rirhandzu brings her deep understanding of agroecological farming practices with indigenous food plants into a social context in her everyday work guiding the programmes of the SA Urban Food & Farming Trust.
This linking of land, tradition and cultural context extends well when visitors, travellers and tourists are part of the mix, and this WTM Africa session is an opportunity to support the travel industry locally and internationally to deepen its engagement with local identity grounded in sustainable food ecology.
The panel includes pioneering wild food champion for growers and chefs, Loubie Rusch, expert fynbos botanist and conservationist, Rupert Koopman, groundbreaking African taste innovator, microbiologist and ice cream entrepreneur, Tapiwa Gudza, and indigenous ingredient advocate, chef Jocelyn Myers-Adams.
SA Urban Food & Farming Trust 