International Internship Opportunity: Food Indaba 2025

The Food Indaba is accepting applications until 17 January 2025 for international students for an internship in June-July 2025.

Summary

• Event production and research internship for the 2025 edition of the annual Food Indaba
• 5 – 7 week unpaid Event Internship programme in Cape Town 
• 23 June to 27 July 2024, with option to start 1 – 2 weeks earlier
• Work unusual hours, from office, from home and on site
• Requires weekend commitments during event pre-production and production

Context

With over 500 in-person attendees, nearly 200 000 online engagements and a media audience reach of over 58 million, Food Indaba is a major platform for food systems awareness and transformation. This annual programme of talks and events held in Cape Town, South Africa focuses on the food system to foster improved resilience, health and justice. Diverse audiences and themes are engaged through the use of diverse formats across the programme, including workshops, walking tours, art exhibitions, conferences, and cooking and eating experiences, in addition to virtual events with a pan-African focus. It brings together a wide range of speakers involved in shaping the food system, providing an opportunity for food growers, academics, activists, writers, nutritionists, policy makers, food lovers and anyone interested in sustainable approaches, to engage in key issues intimately connected to the food we eat, and find ways to work together in creating a better food future. 

Food Indaba 2025, the 7th edition of the Food Indaba, runs from 7 to 20 July 2025, and will feature some 20 events over 14 days across multiple Cape Town geographies and online. 

The theme of Food Indaba 2025 is Artificial Intelligence and the Food System, moving beyond AI’s anticipated role in creating efficiencies in food production to unpack its still untapped potential for addressing systemic injustices and inequalities in African food systems.

The Food Indaba is a project of the South African Urban Food and Farming Trust, a registered non-profit public benefit organisation. 

Internship offered

We are recruiting an international student for an internship role at the 2025 Food Indaba. This is a prestigious internship placement that gives the successful candidate unique access to roleplayers across all aspects of the African food system, and deep insights into complex African systems of economics, culture, language, and specifically for the 2025 programme, Artificial Intelligence, as it plays out across the continent.  

Through this internship, the successful candidate will also: 

• Gain valuable experience and build a relevant resume
• Live and work in a foreign culture, opening up a new way to travel and explore, building adaptability and resourcefulness.
• Contribute to social impact by helping to address the critical challenge of our broken food system.
• Take on more responsibility than with the average internship, working hands-on as part of a small team with big impact.

Tasks during the internship will include:

• Assisting with all forms of pre-production, including logistical planning, scheduling, site assessments, taking meeting notes
• Ushering at events
• Logistical support during production
• Ensuring booked speakers / hosts / personnel arrive and know where to get everything they need
• Event setup and striking

Requirements

In addition to being available for the indicated dates and having the financial means to support themselves throughout the internship, the ideal candidate will have these skills in their skill set:

• MS Office especially Word and Excel, Google Workspace especially docs and sheets, ChatGPT and other LLMs, especially prompts for image generation 
• Time management – punctuality is essential
• Be able to critically analyse problems and solve them
• Be able to conduct interviews with people
• Good interpersonal skills across different socio-cultural contexts

Work will take place at the Food Indaba production office, location in Cape Town to be confirmed, from the SAUFFT office in Langa, from the event venues during production, and from home. The successful candidate will need to be comfortable with using Uber to get to required locations. In certain instances, transport will be provided by the production team. 

While this internship is most suited for a candidate who is engaging with AI in some key aspect of their studies, the ideal candidate should be interested in one or more of the following topics:

• Food and Health
• Food and Justice
• Economic development
• Political systems
• Indigenous knowledge systems
• Event production and management
• Public relations

To Apply

To apply for this internship, please submit the following to events@foodindaba.org no later than 17h00 (UTC+2) Friday, 10 January 2025:

• CV or Resume
• Letter of Motivation

Shortlisted candidates will be contacted for an interview. Applicants who have not been contacted within 30 days of the closing date should consider their application unsuccessful.

Internships for South Africans will be announced shortly. Please monitor our social channels for updates.