Kelsey Daniels

Social innovation can be defined as meeting a certain need through new more
effective solution. On the topic of food insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa, regional and
transnational organizations such as the African Union and the United Nations have
utilized wide scale cooperation as social innovation in attempt to mitigate this issue. The
African Union is a regional institution comprised of 54 African countries. It was formed
in 1999 with the purpose of promoting unity, sovereignty and cooperation for economic
and social development (African). Within the AU there is a department titled the
Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture thats vision is a transformed sustainable
agriculture that guarantees food and nutrition security and equitable economic growth for
all citizens (African). Just one example of their work on food insecurity is that in 2011,
the Commissioner of this department signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the
Director General of Africa Rice Center and agreed to promote rice production
technologies, strengthen policy research and development and improve food and
agricultural policies among member states (Directorate).
The United Nations has been another helpful international organization. At the
Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000, eight international development goals
were set to be accomplished by 2015, the first being to eradicate extreme poverty and
hunger (United). Although this goal has not been fully achieved progress has been made.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN has been a source of knowledge and a
neutral setting for countries to create higher levels of food security and to meet the
millennium goals. In sub-Saharan African they recently implemented a program in
Uganda called The Farm Camp initiative. Over 30 schools, 300 students and 50 teachers
are involved to equip students with agricultural skills and better their nutrition (Food).
As globalization and interconnectedness increases, it is crucial that issues such as food
security be addressed not only on the state level but on the global level with organizations
such as the AU and UN.

Allison Tully
A social innovation is any kind of intervention or solution to a problem. Since my
groups topic is food security is Sub-Saharan Africa, I am interested in the social
innovations that have been applied and effective in this particular region. I plan to focus
this article on the success stories because success stories provide hope that in the battle
for agricultural development and food security can be won (Kidane 72). After
researching some undeveloped countries in the Sub-Saharan region, I noticed that Ghana
had once been suffering from food security and agricultural problems and recently has
been improving. I began to look into how Ghana has been successful in improving its
conditions and what social innovations have been made to overcome these problems
while other undeveloped countries in the same African region continue to struggle.
The Ghana Center for Entrepreneurship, Employment, and Innovation (GCEEI) is
a program of created by the public and private sectors that has come up with social
innovations to improve the conditions in Ghana, Africa. The GCEEIs main legacy has
been creating equal opportunities to get people on their feet and where they need to be in
hopes that they will get a job and be successful. Their latest project is the Ghana youth
Agrifair which is a platform to showcase agriculture start-ups pioneered by young
people, to bring to light the programs developed by the governments/private sector for
youth involvement in agriculture, funding opportunities for acribusiness and will climax
with a high level networking and cocktail with selected young leaders and musicians
(GCEII 1). This platform is a good strategy that addresses my groups global issue of
agricultural growth because it sets the people of Ghana up with opportunities and
programs to learn about the importance of agriculture. This social innovation educates
people, provides agricultural jobs, and improves the agriculture as a whole for the
country. I plan to base my groups social innovations off of the idea of GCEEIs social
innovation platform that would improve the agricultural growth of other countries in SubSaharan Africa.
The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the International Institute for
Tropical Agriculture (IITA) have improved food security for Ghana by the development
machinery to help women farmers produce food. Because women are responsible for
most of the food production and because women have fewer tools than men, the IRRI has
developed new machines included micro rice mills, direct seeding equipment,
transplanters, and threshing machines while the IITA has developed cassava-processing
equipment (Quisumbing 3). These machines have reduced the labor intensity and
ergonomic requirements of women that Ghana relies on for food security. These social
innovations developed by the IRRI and IITA are good examples of strategies used to
improve the food security of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. My group and I plan to
use similar strategies by looking for new machinery, tools, and technology to improve the
food security for other undeveloped countries in the Sub-Saharan region.
My group and I plan to use success stories, like those of Ghana, to use as
inspirations and examples of good strategies and social innovations that we aim to create
and use to improve our global issue of food security and agricultural growth in other
countries besides Ghana in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Julie King
Social innovation is a solution to solve a social problem that is different and
hopefully better than the solutions currently being applied to that problem. Using social
innovation to come up with solutions is generally more efficient and sustainable. It takes
new ideas and strategies to better help a society with its problems. Social innovators can
be apart of the government, non-profit organizations or even just members of a society.
When addressing social innovations with food insecurity in Sub Saharan Africa,
there are many angles a social innovator could approach the issue. An organization that is
a large social innovator for SSA is Social Impact, an organization thats goal is to make
international development more effective in improving people's lives (2). They assist not
only SSA but also many other struggling countries throughout the world. Many of their
projects focus on farming and agricultural issues in the region. A program called the
South Africa Umbrella Grant Management Evaluation assists the region in getting aid and
support to specific areas that need assistance most.
Their program to directly assist in decreasing food insecurity is attempting to raise the
levels of trade for commodities and to enhance agricultural productivity on the ground.
The aspect of trade is an extremely important part of the solution to decrease food
insecurity. The region is limited in what they can successfully grow partially because of
environmental constraints. The Initiative to End Hunger in Africa (IEHA) was a vital step
for this region in reducing food insecurity. If they continued their efforts and gained
support from and became allies with already developed countries, their efforts could be
expedited. For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $15 million to
Sub Saharan Africa Social innovation efforts. More support such as this need to be sought
out to continue to improve food security. (1)
Support does not just come in forms of money. An organization called the International
Youth Foundation assists young children in SSA to ensure they live up to their full
potential and find success in the career they choose. This organization believes that life
skills are critical in this region, and from this they created a program called Passport to
Success. This program helps train youth not only in their interests, but also to be
confident and reliable team members. (3) Hindering Hunger will make efforts to form
allies and find further support. This support will be funding as well as volunteers to
introduce more education and efforts to provide the region with necessary tools to
decrease food insecurity.

Natalie Lanzisero
Social innovation refers to the introduction of new methods, strategies, or concepts with
the intention of improving current conditions and bettering society. Those individuals
whom bring about social innovation are known as agents of change. They identify a need
in the community and work to motivate constituents and stakeholders to collaborate and
solve the issue. Most often the biggest reason for delayed success of social initiatives is
the lack cohesion among the three sectors of the megacommunity. It is crucial that the
public, private, and non-profit sector contribute their resources to the cause in an efficient
and effective way to ensure a sustainable solution. The public sector clearly has an
immense amount of influence on the citizens of their community and thus their respective
social initiatives. When a country falls under a totalitarian regime or authoritarian
dictatorship, political unrest and social conflict often lead to the destruction of social
systems; specifically economic and agricultural infrastructures. The corrupt political
structures
The United Nations Humanitarian Needs Overview for Sudan estimates the food and
livelihood insecure population to 5.3 million (World Food Programme). After the 2011
separation from South Sudan, this struggling nation lost 75% of oil output and 60% of
fiscal revenue. The agricultural sector of Sudan contributes to 33.9% of the nations GDP,
highlighting the importance of this industry to the overall wellbeing of the nation. The
country saw a surplus of sorghum and millet production in the 2014-2015 year providing
opportunities for exports. However, although there was a large amount of food produced,
high market prices lowered the purchasing power for these items. Additionally, the
nutritional sustenance of the grains does not provide the consumer with nearly enough
nutrients and minerals (like those found in vegetables) to have a nourishing diet. This
results in a widespread over-reliance on relatively less nutritious staple foods such as
sorghum and millet (World Food Programme).
The Food Security and Agricultural Development in Sub-Saharan Africa released
a policy brief titled Building a case for more public support in which they highlight
strategic innovative solutions to this global issue. In countries facing conflict, food
security has surely taken an unspeakable toll on the population. Immediate measures
should be taken to distribute food to vulnerable groups in need. Once this is addressed,
the nation should make movements to fund involvement in reconstruction activities. Less
advanced countries (with a GDP below $750 per capita) often are characterized by weak
institutional capacity, a weak private sector, and poorly coordinated markets. There is a
clear need to strengthen public institutions within these nations and put in place a policy
framework for innovation. Other strategies for social innovation include anything moving
in the direction of political and economic stability, placement of public services,
promotion of technological change, and the support of smallholder farmer organizations
(FAO).