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IGZ at Ubuntu Futures Tanzania 2026: Rethinking Food Systems through Relational Foresight

08.07.2026
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Exchange and Discussion during the event. Photo: Wingod Odemary, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Exchange and Discussion during the event. Photo: Wingod Odemary, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

On June 1–2, 2026, IGZ participated in the Utu/Ubuntu Futures Tanzania 2026 workshop: “Co-creating Food, Biodiversity, and Climate Futures through Relational Foresight”, a participatory approach to imagining future possibilities through dialogue, storytelling, and collective reflection grounded in relationships and shared responsibility, held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The workshop brought together researchers, policymakers, NGOs, community leaders, and knowledge holders from Tanzania, across Africa, and Europe in a structured two-day dialogue on the futures of food systems, biodiversity, and climate resilience.

The workshop was informed by the Ubuntu/Utu philosophy, a relational tradition from East and Southern Africa emphasising interdependence and collective responsibility. Within this framework, participants discussed how values such as care, reciprocity, and repair can inform future food systems governance.

As part of the Leibniz Lab 'Systemic Sustainability', Dr. Mahlet Degefu Awoke represented IGZ at the workshop, moderating one of the small-circle dialogues in the session “What Must Be Remembered So the Future Can Feed Us”, in which participants reflected on practices and knowledge that have sustained food systems across generations and what risks being lost in current transformations.

Over the two days, participants engaged in story-based dialogues, systems mapping, and participatory foresight exercises, working across disciplines and sectors and deliberately moving between different forms of knowledge, including scientific expertise, lived experience, oral tradition, and community memory. The workshop concluded with a shared Ubuntu Futures Covenant: a collective statement of responsibility and commitment toward more just and resilient food and ecological futures.

The discussions highlighted the importance of integrating scientific, indigenous, experiential, and community-based knowledge when addressing interconnected challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity. The workshop connects to IGZ's research at the interface of sustainability, food systems, and global change, and to its commitment to integrating ecological, economic, and societal dimensions in addressing food security and biodiversity challenges.

Participating in this workshop highlighted:

  • Scientific expertise is one of several legitimate forms of knowledge, and resilient food systems depend on lived experience, oral tradition, and community memory as much as on research findings.
  • The value of relational methods: story-based dialogue and participatory foresight offer approaches to stakeholder engagement that go beyond consultation toward genuine co-reflection, with potential relevance for our own research processes.
  • New connections with researchers, practitioners, and community organisations working on food security and biodiversity across Tanzania and the wider African continent, which we hope to build on in future collaboration.

The workshop was organised by the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), the Leibniz Lab 'Systemic Sustainability', the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), and Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), for creating this space and for the collaboration.

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