SEMINAR INVITATION: #FoodTalks: Student hunger and achieving the right to food for all, what role for universities?, 5 November 2019

The Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship (CAS) invites you to a #FoodTalks seminar on student hunger and achieving the right to food for all. The question being what role for universities? There will be academic, activist, and student perspectives brought by inputs from Professor Vishwas Satgar, Oluwafunmilola Adeniyi, and Elgin Hlaka. This event is organised in collaboration with the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security, the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation (GovInn), and the Human Economy Programme within CAS.
Too many students at our universities go hungry, negatively affecting their studies and their lives. At the same time, universities are sights of food selling and eating and are large buyers of food. There are great opportunities for universities to play a role in creating more sustainable and healthy food environments, for them to use their buying power to influence wider food systems, and to inculcate healthy food production, processing and eating habits, not only in what they teach, but also in how they operate. This #FoodTalks seminar will help us understand the food challenges and opportunities at universities, and to share from existing initiatives that are responding to these challenges. 

Professor Vishwas Satgar holds a PhD in International Relations and is an academic at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). He has been an activist for over 30 years and is cofounder and a leader of the South African Food Sovereignty Campaign. His research interests include Green International Political Economy; Empire and the Crisis of Civilisation, Critical Theory and International Relations; and Transnational Alternatives. He recently edited Capitalism’s Crises: Class Struggles in South Africa and the World, Wits Press (2015) and was awarded a Distinguished Contribution Award by the World Association of Political Economy for editing the Democratic Marxism Book series.

Oluwafunmilola Adeniyi is a lawyer who holds an LLM (Cum Laude) from the University of the Western Cape (UWC), South Africa. She is a Doctoral researcher at UWC and her research interests are in socio-economic rights, with a focus on the right to food, women’s rights and access to justice. She leads the national Access to Food for Students Project based at the Dullah Omar Institute, which is probing food insecurity and the gendered implications in South African tertiary institutions.

Elgin Hlaka is a BA Law and Politics student, at the University of the Witwatersrand, who is passionate about food sovereignty and justice. All efforts and intentions are exerted towards the full realization of treating all people, especially those who are vulnerable to hunger and poverty, with dignity. He is a leader in the Wits Inala Forum that has led the establishment of a number of initiatives to address food insecurity and promote food sovereignty at Wits University.

DATE Tuesday 5 November 2019
TIME 13:30 – 15:30
VENUE Old College House Seminar Lounge, 1-09, University of Pretoria
RSVP Cecelia Samson, 012 420 2653, [email protected]

Food talks to us at many levels, touching on important aspects of our lives and society. This is a continuation of a series of seminars that is bringing together leading thinkers and practitioners in the sector to share knowledge, and create a space to talk about the current food system and how we can move to a socially and ecologically regenerative, just and nourishing food system in South Africa and the region.