Clean Plates Begin on the Farm

A solar-powered freezer for fish in Kalangala (📷JEEP, 2018)

What if East Africa’s food-waste problem begins long before food reaches the plate?

This question matters as the world marks World Cleanup Day 2026 under the theme “From Clean Plates to Clean Cities.”

Globally, the numbers are staggering. The latest UN Sustainable Development Goals Report says an estimated 13.3% of food produced was lost after harvest and before reaching retail markets in 2023. In 2022, another 1.05 billion tonnes of food were wasted at retail, food-service and household levels. Together, food loss and waste generate up to 10% of global greenhouse-gas emissions and represent enormous economic losses.

But East Africa needs to view this problem through the farmer's eyes.

Imagine a smallholder farmer harvesting tomatoes, milk, vegetables, fruits or fish. The food may never reach a household plate—not because a consumer threw it away, but because there was no affordable way to irrigate consistently, cool the produce, dry it, process it, store it or transport it to a market in time.

That is food waste too.

The UN Economic Commission for Africa’s 2025 review of food security in Eastern Africa highlights the region's exposure to rising temperatures and erratic rainfall, declining agricultural productivity and food shortages. It calls for greater investment in agriculture, including climate-smart practices and irrigation, alongside stronger regional trade.

This is where innovation matters.

Solar-powered irrigation can help farmers reduce their dependence on increasingly unreliable rainfall. Solar-powered cold storage can help preserve milk, fish, fruits and vegetables. Solar drying can turn surplus and highly perishable produce into products that can be stored and sold later. Solar-powered agro-processing can help farmers and small enterprises capture more value locally.

These are not simply renewable-energy interventions. They are food-system interventions.

They can strengthen agricultural value chains by connecting production with preservation, processing, markets and consumers.

ECA has repeatedly highlighted inadequate storage, energy and irrigation infrastructure as constraints to stronger agricultural value chains. More recently, it has called for investment in infrastructure—including energy, irrigation, logistics and storage—to support food-system transformation and regional trade.

The implication is important: we should not wait until food becomes waste to start thinking about waste.

We need to prevent losses where they begin.

That means putting farmers, cooperatives, women and youth-led enterprises at the centre of food-system innovation—and ensuring that they can access appropriate technologies and finance. It means seeing solar irrigation, cooling, drying and processing not as isolated technologies, but as pieces of a stronger rural-to-urban food economy.

There is also a regional opportunity. ECA’s work on Eastern Africa points to stronger intra-regional trade as one pathway towards more resilient food systems. But food cannot move efficiently across borders if it deteriorates before reaching the market.

So, this World Cleanup Day, perhaps we should ask a different question:

How much food could we keep off the waste stream if we invested more in the systems that help farmers preserve what they produce?

A clean city is important. But a truly sustainable food system begins much earlier—where food is grown, harvested, stored, processed and transported.

From clean plates to clean cities, the journey must begin with food systems that lose less.

The Solutions We Need May Already Be Here: Can South-South Cooperation Help East Africa Scale?

Source: imam-us.org

A smallholder farmer in Uganda faces a failed harvest after an unpredictable rainy season.

Across the border in Kenya, another farmer is experimenting with a climate-resilient practice. In Tanzania, communities are testing approaches to restore degraded landscapes. In Rwanda, innovators are using digital tools to solve problems that once seemed impossible.

So why do we so often look outside our region for answers to problems that our neighbours are already solving?

This is the question that South-South and triangular cooperation should force us to confront.

As we mark the United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation 2026, under the theme “Solidarity Rising: Global Alliance for Inclusive and Innovative Development,” we have an opportunity to rethink development cooperation in East Africa.

The region does not suffer from a shortage of knowledge, innovation or capable people.

Perhaps we suffer from insufficient connection between them.

The latest Sustainable Development Goals Report 2026 makes the urgency clear: with the 2030 deadline approaching, progress remains uneven and accelerated action is needed. Yet the report also highlights success stories showing how local action, national policies and partnerships can produce tangible improvements in people's lives.

That should challenge us to think differently about how development solutions move.

South-South cooperation offers a different proposition: countries learning from countries facing similar realities; institutions sharing expertise; communities exchanging practical solutions; innovators accessing new markets; and governments strengthening capacities by learning from experience elsewhere.

Triangular cooperation can add another dimension—bringing development partners, multilateral institutions, technology providers or financial resources into partnerships where Southern countries help define the problem and lead the solution.

For East Africa, this is not simply about achieving the SDGs. It is also about advancing Africa's own development agenda.

The African Union's Agenda 2063 provides the continental framework for an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens. It explicitly recognises the importance of stronger partnerships, regional integration and African-led initiatives.

The AU's 2025 Africa Integration Report reinforces this direction, highlighting both progress and persistent gaps in regional integration and identifying reforms needed to accelerate Agenda 2063.

This is where South-South cooperation can become more than a diplomatic slogan.

Imagine a Ugandan district learning from Kenya's experience in climate-smart agriculture. A Tanzanian institution sharing practical knowledge on sustainable land management. A Rwandan innovation adapted by entrepreneurs elsewhere in the region. A successful community-based energy model moving across borders—not as a packaged project, but as knowledge that communities can reshape for their own circumstances.

The objective should not be to copy solutions. It should be to shorten the learning curve.

A solution developed in one country may need to be redesigned for another. What matters is creating pathways for learning, adaptation and scale while keeping national priorities and local communities at the centre.

This matters because East Africa's development challenges are increasingly interconnected. Climate change, food insecurity, ecosystem degradation, energy access, unemployment, water insecurity and digital transformation do not respect national boundaries.

South-South and triangular cooperation can therefore become a practical means of implementation for SDG 17—helping countries mobilise expertise, strengthen institutional and human capacities, diversify development partnerships and advance nationally owned SDG priorities.

But there is a danger.

South-South cooperation could become just another series of conferences, exchange visits, memoranda and photographs if it does not ultimately change what happens on the ground.

The real test is not how many delegations travel.

It is whether a district officer returns with a capacity that improves public service delivery.

Whether a farmer gains access to knowledge or technology that strengthens resilience.

Whether a young entrepreneur finds a regional market.

Whether a community adapts a successful restoration model to its own landscape.

Whether governments become better equipped to deliver the priorities they have already identified.

That is when cooperation becomes development.

So, on this United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation, perhaps the question we should ask is not:

“Who will bring us the solution?”

But:

“Who in our region is already solving this problem—and how can we help their solution travel?”

East Africa does not have to wait for every solution to arrive from somewhere else.

Some of the solutions we need may already be here.

Our challenge is to connect them, adapt them, finance them and scale them—through partnerships that put African knowledge, national ownership and people's lived realities at the centre.

Solidarity should not simply move resources. It should move knowledge, opportunity and solutions.