ChapterPDF Available

iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About Food)

Authors:
18 iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About Food)
Abstract
iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About Food) is an interdisciplinary research
project that aims to create a more sustainable food system in Johannesburg
through urban agriculture. In 2013, a multi-stakeholder engagement (MSE)
process identified appropriate technology as a key requirement in a sustainable
food system. In response, in 2014, an interdisciplinary student service-learning
course was developed at the University of Johannesburg in the departments of
Development Studies and Industrial Design. The service-learning course utilized a
methodology that integrated participatory social science and human-centered
design research methods in order to develop technologies to improve the
productivity of marginalized and resource-poor urban farmers. Teams of students
worked with farmers on three urban sites, each with their own specific
technological needs. The students’ achievement of the service-learning course
objectives was assessed through a variety of disciplinary specific practical and
written assignments.
Keywords
iZindaba Zokudla, urban agriculture, sustainable food systems change,
appropriate technology, development studies, industrial design, multi-stakeholder
engagement, participatory social science, human-centered design, service-learning
Pre-Publication Draft
18 iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About Food)
Pre-Publication Draft
18 iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About Food)
Runninghead Right-hand pages: iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About Food)
Runninghead Left-hand pages: Angus Donald Campbell and Naudé Malan
18
iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About
Food)
Innovation in the Soweto Food System
Angus Donald Campbell and Naudé Malan
iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About Food): Innovation in the Soweto Food
System
1
is an interdisciplinary research project initiated by the departments of
Development Studies and Industrial Design at the University of Johannesburg
(UJ), South Africa. The project aims to create a more sustainable food system in
Johannesburg through urban agriculture. In 2013, iZindaba Zokudla conducted a
series of public multi-stakeholder engagement (Dubbeling, de Zeeuw, and van
Veenhuizen 2010) sessions to develop a strategic plan for urban agriculture in
Soweto.
2
Appropriate technology was identified as a key requirement for
sustainable food-systems change.
In response, an interdisciplinary service-learning (Jacoby 2015) course
was developed in 2014 to support students and urban farmers in designing
appropriate technology for marginalized and resource-poor urban farms. The
Pre-Publication Draft
18 iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About Food)
course, Urban Agriculture and Food Systems Change, was offered to Bachelor of
Technology Industrial Design students as a component of their Design Theory 4
and Product Design 4 modules and to Bachelor of Arts Honours Development
Studies students in their Participation and Institutional Development module.
Urban farmers located at three educational centers in Soweto were identified to
take part in the design process. For each site, an interdisciplinary team was
assembled that consisted of one industrial design student, between four and seven
development studies students, and between three and five local farmers.
The service-learning course was offered to the students with the following
learning objectives:
identify opportunities for technological design through processes of
personal immersion and engagement with community partners
design appropriate technology for resource-poor contexts through
collaborative design and social science methods
critically evaluate the impact of relevant design processes and outcomes
Methodology
The 2014 service-learning course was developed as a direct result of the iZindaba
Zokudla multi-stakeholder engagement sessions (see Figure 18.1) (Dubbeling, de
Pre-Publication Draft
18 iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About Food)
Zeeuw, and van Veenhuizen 2010), which began in 2013. The sessions continued
in 2014 in conjunction with the service-learning course, resulting in increased
articulation and interaction in the complex collective-action project. Broad
participation democratized opportunities for developing and refining urban-farm
technology, contextualizing and socializing it in the process. Inherent in this
methodology was an acknowledgment that technology is part of a local
sociotechnical system (Latour 2005), which includes social capital among actors
(Malan 2015a), local resources such as land, and city policies (Malan 2015b).
This acknowledgment was important to encourage appropriate technological
outcomes from the service-learning course (Smillie 2000).
[Insert 15031-1713-P2-018-Figure-001 Here]
Figure 18.1 iZindaba Zokudla multi-stakeholder engagement session at the UJ
Soweto campus. Naudé Malan and Angus D. Campbell, iZindaba Zokudla,
Johannesburg, South Africa, 2013.
The specific methods used within the service-learning course drew on
participatory action research and human-centred design (Campbell 2013; Hussain,
Sanders, and Seinert 2010). A step-by-step methodological guide was provided to
the students but was sufficiently flexible to encourage improvisation. This
methodological guide consisted of three distinct phases: (1) immersion in the
lifeworld of the farmers (Brand and Campbell 2014; Theron, Wetmore, and
Pre-Publication Draft
18 iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About Food)
Malan 2016); (2) active engagement with the farmers; and (3) continual reflection
on the process (Malan and Campbell 2014).
Immersion was encouraged through a range of field visits and theoretical
lectures. Engagement was facilitated through different design media, such as
drawings, clay, cardboard models, and toys, to enable effective three-way
communication between the designers, social scientists, and farmers. Reflection
was undertaken using private online student blogs. In each team, the industrial
design students were required to focus on the design of the technology, and the
development studies students took up roles as team managers, process monitors,
and asset and stakeholder mappers.
Learning and Technological Outcomes
Participatory methods enabled students to observe and engage with farmers on
each of the sites in order to identify appropriate designs. The process resulted in
three prototype technologies over a period of fourteen weeks of teaching time and
biweekly field trips to farming sites, farmers’ markets, local farming cooperatives,
or iZindaba Zokudla multi-stakeholder engagement sessions. The prototypes
served as the industrial design students’ major project outcome for the semester.
The students documented the design process in their blogs, which were integrated
with their fieldwork and design development into a final mini-dissertation. The
Pre-Publication Draft
18 iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About Food)
development studies students were required to write four assignments: a
contextualization of the current food system in Soweto, their own private
reflective blog, a report on their participatory process, and an evaluation of the
outcomes of the project.
[Insert 15031-1713-P2-018-Figure-002 Here]
Figure 18.2 Seedling growing system concept discussion at Setlakalana Molepo
Adult Education Centre, Jomari Budricks, Angus D. Campbell, and Naudé Malan,
Take Root Seedling Growing System for iZindaba Zokudla, Johannesburg, South
Africa, 2014.
The three prototype technologies that were realized surpassed all
expectations, resulting in the university’s Technology Transfer Office
provisionally patenting them after the course. They included a self-watering
seedling growing system (see Figure 18.2), an off-grid food storage and cooling
system (see Figures 18.3 and 18.4), and an off-grid water pump. The seedling
growing system was exhibited internationally and included in the publication
Design to Feed the World (Di Lucchio and Imbesi 2015, 144, 153–4). The off-
grid food storage and cooling system has been further validated by an external
engineering company, Resolution Circle, to be batch manufactured. This process
still continues but is not open to participating farmers to test its appropriateness
effectively. Therefore, the water pump was consciously made more accessible. It
Pre-Publication Draft
18 iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About Food)
was documented in an open source manual,
3
which used readily available
plumbing components for do-it-yourself manufacture by urban farmers. The
manual was printed and disseminated to 150 urban farmers in two of the iZindaba
Zokudla engagement sessions and has thus far been viewed seventy times and
downloaded thirteen times (Jacobsz, Campbell, and Malan 2014).
[Insert 15031-1713-P2-018-Figure-003 Here]
Figure 18.3 Food-storage prototype evaluation with urban farmers from
Siyazenzela. Natalia Tofas, Angus D. Campbell, and Naudé Malan, Umlimi
Urban Food Storage Unit for iZindaba Zokudla, Johannesburg, South Africa,
2014.
The fourteen private student blogs documented the design research
process and illustrated how design and societal considerations can be built into
technology development. On analysis, it was clear that a methodological structure
with defined disciplinary outputs succeeded in meeting the intended learning
objectives of the course. Apart from limited interpersonal conflict, students and
farmers collaborated amicably.
The service-learning aspect of the course led to increased diversity within
the student and farmer teams in terms of culture and social class. This was
important to encourage appropriate and relevant knowledge outcomes in the
postcolonial and postapartheid South African context (Mbembe 2015). Both
Pre-Publication Draft
18 iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About Food)
student groups benefited from learning from each other through collaboration,
although depending on team dynamics, some of the development studies students
felt that the practical design of the physical technology overshadowed their
written theoretical outputs. This conflict required coordination by the lecturers to
help bridge the two disciplines.
[Insert 15031-1713-P2-018-Figure-004 Here]
Figure 18.4 The evaporative cooled food storage system accommodates the post-
harvest activities of food packing, transportation, and display. Natalia Tofas,
Angus D. Campbell, and Naudé Malan, Umlimi Urban Food Storage Unit for
iZindaba Zokudla, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2014.
Real-world learning, with the associated complexity involved in the
interactions between multiple actors, requires sufficient time. The service-learning
course somewhat underestimated these time requirements. Even with these
shortcomings, the course benefited both the urban farmers, who received more
appropriate technology, and the students, who experienced real-world embedding
of their own learning—resulting in highly appropriate knowledge outcomes for
the next generation of South African citizens.
4
Pre-Publication Draft
18 iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About Food)
Notes
References
Brand, Kyle, and Angus Donald Campbell. 2014. “In-Context and Ecology
Immersion for Resilience: An Exploration of the Design of a Household
Farming Kit.” In Proceedings of the International Union of Architects
World Congress: UIA 2014 Durban: Architecture Otherwhere: Resilience,
Ecology, Values, edited by Amira Osman et al., 1332–43. Durban, South
Africa: UIA.
Campbell, Angus Donald. 2013. “Designing for Development in Africa: A
Critical Exploration of Literature and Case Studies from the Disciplines of
Industrial Design and Development Studies.” In Proceedings of the
Gaborone International Design Conference (GIDEC) 2013: Design
Future: Creativity, Innovation, and Development. Gaborone: University of
Botswana.
Di Lucchio, Loredana, and Lorenzo Imbesi. 2015. Design to Feed the World: 100
Projects, 50 Schools, 5 Topics. Milan, Italy: RDesignPress.
Dubbeling, Marielle, Henk de Zeeuw, and René van Veenhuizen. 2010. Cities,
Poverty and Food: Multi-Stakeholder Policy and Planning in Urban
Agriculture. Rugby: Practical Action Publishing.
Pre-Publication Draft
18 iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About Food)
Hussain, Sofia, Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders, and Martin Seinert. 2010. “Participatory
Design with Marginalized People in Developing Countries: Challenges
and Opportunities Experienced in a Field Study in Cambodia.”
International Journal of Design 6 (2): 91–109.
Jacobsz, Werner C., Angus Donald Campbell, and Naudé Malan. 2014. No. 1 in
the Izindaba Zokudla Make Your Own Series of DIY Technology Guides:
How to Make Your Own Water Pump. Johannesburg, South Africa: Design
Society Development DESIS Lab.
www.academia.edu/18855164/No._1_in_the_Izindaba_Zokudla_Make_Y
our_Own_Series_of_DIY_Technology_Guides_How_to_Make_Your_Ow
n_Water_Pump.
Jacoby, Barbara. 2015. Service-Learning Essentials: Questions, Answers, and
Lessons Learned. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-
Theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Malan, Naudé. 2015a. “Design and Social Innovation for Systemic Change:
Creating Social Capital for a Farmers’ Market.” In The Virtuous Circle:
Design Culture and Experimentation, edited by Luisa Collina, Laura
Galluzzo, and Anna Meroni, 965–78. Milan, Italy: McGraw-Hill
Education.
Pre-Publication Draft
18 iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About Food)
Malan, Naudé. 2015b. “Urban Farmers and Urban Agriculture in Johannesburg:
Responding to the Food Resilience Strategy.” Agrekon 54 (2): 51–75.
Malan, Naudé, and Angus Donald Campbell. 2014. “Design, Social Change, and
Development: A Social Methodology.” In Design with the Other 90%:
Cumulus Johannesburg Conference Proceedings, edited by Amanda
Breytenbach et al., 94–101. Johannesburg, South Africa: Cumulus
Johannesburg.
Mbembe, Achille. 2015. “Decolonizing Knowledge and the Question of the
Archive.” Africa Is a Country.
https://africaisacountry.atavist.com/decolonizing-knowledge-and-the-
question-of-the-archive.
Smillie, Ian. 2000. Mastering the Machine Revisited: Poverty, Aid, and
Technology. Rugby, UK: Practical Action Publishing.
Theron, Francois, Stephen Wetmore, and Naudé Malan. 2016. “Exploring Action
Research Methodology: Practical Options for Grassroots Development
Research.” In Development, Change, and the Change Agent: Facilitation
at Grassroots, edited by Francois Theron and Nthuthuko Mchunu, 317–
41. Hatfield, South Africa: Van Schaik Publishers.
Pre-Publication Draft
18 iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations About Food)
1
. For more information, see
www.designsocietydevelopment.org/project/izindaba-zokudla/ and
www.facebook.com/izindabazokudla/.
2
Soweto is a former apartheid nonwhite township on the outskirts of
Johannesburg and currently hosts a UJ campus, where the engagement
events took place.
3
The open source movement is one where intellectual property is freely shared
for broad dissemination; in this case, the manual was licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International License.
4
This work is based on research supported by the University of Johannesburg
Teaching Innovation Fund and in part by the National Research
Foundation (NRF) of South Africa for the Thuthuka, unique grant number
88030 held by Angus D. Campbell and titled, “Designing Development:
An Exploration of Technology Innovation by Small-Scale Urban Farmers
in Johannesburg,” and unique grant number 88059 held by Dr. Naudé
Malan and titled, “Innovation in the Soweto Food System: Engaging with
Soweto Agriculture.” Any opinion, finding, and conclusion or
recommendation expressed in this material are that of the authors, and the
NRF does not accept any liability in this regard.
Pre-Publication Draft
... iZindaba Zokudla 1 is a multi-stakeholder engagement project that aims to create opportunities for urban agriculture in a sustainable food system. iZindaba Zokudla emerged from a research project in participatory technology design (Malan and Campbell, 2014;Campbell and Malan, 2018;Malan, 2020a). The NGOs REOS Partners and TransForum (REOS Partners, and TransForum, 2011) and the South African Food Lab introduced the author to food systems thinking and TransForum's multi-stakeholder engagement methodology accommodating public, business, and civil society interests (Regeer et al., 2011;Van Latesteijn and Andeweg, 2011). ...
Article
Full-text available
“iZindaba Zokudla” means we talk about the food that we eat. iZindaba Zokudla is a public innovation lab that uses stakeholder-engagement methods to create “opportunities for urban agriculture in a sustainable food system.” iZindaba Zokudla is presented as an extra-institutional means to govern the water, land, energy, and waste nexus. This reflective essay critically describes iZindaba Zokudla and applies this to the design of institutional steering mechanisms to govern the food, water, land, and energy nexus towards sustainability. Governance is an intersubjective and interactive process between the subjects of governance and governance itself. Sustainability, as an interactive process, implies the creation of autocatalytic and symbiotic communities in society that integrates diverse actors and stakeholders, inclusive of scientific and lay actors, and ecosystems. iZindaba Zokudla is a means to govern and create such communities, and this article describes and reflects on how iZindaba Zokudla has created and managed such symbiotic communities or autocatalytic networks in the food system. The article generalises how the activities conducted in iZindaba Zokudla can be used to govern the water, land, energy, and waste nexus for sustainability. The article shows how iZindaba Zokudla has realised a progressive governance through the facilitation of its Farmers' Lab and website; how it has created opportunities for participation; and how it enables critical reflection in society.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
As pressure to access African resources and explore new market opportunities increases in light of a diminishing Western resource base, saturated markets and troubled economies; it is a priority for African designers to gain a better understanding of the broader and context specific issues of development. This paper explores the disciplines of Development Studies and Industrial Design in order to critically identify approaches to development best suited for African design interventions. Academics and practitioners in Development Studies tend to support one of two camps, the first, a highly critical post-Truman concept of development as a Capitalist agenda to access new markets and the second a more humanitarian approach to an equitable increase in quality of life for all. When exploring industrial design, products regularly become too style focused and fashionable, leading to increased redundancy while forgetting the ethical and political implications of design. Additionally industrial designers have been criticised for their take on development by creating products either designed with a misguided sense of charity, or designed for those in need, but remotely and without an understanding of cultural contexts. Similarly in recent conference proceedings claims of “design trawling” were raised against designers working for big corporates in impoverished communities highlighting possible hidden “Imperialistic agendas”. This raises the question of how designers should balance seemingly contradictory good intentions and commercial interests in order to create a more democratic notion of design. Many of the critics of design do not doubt its power to create positive social change and there are many documented accounts of very successful products created for a more equitable society. This paper firstly introduces a history of development and design and then utilises the recent publication Design and Social Impact: A Cross-sectoral Agenda for Design Education, Research and Practice (Smithsonian Institution, 2013) in order to identify gaps and challenges in current approaches to social impact design. This paper then specifically compares some of these issues under the banners of participation, and monitoring and evaluation by utilising literature and case studies drawn from the historically older discipline of Development Studies in comparison to literature and case studies from the discipline of Industrial Design. The aim of this is to identify approaches and methods for development best suited for designers in Africa.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Human-Centred Design proposes the method of In-context Immersion or meeting people where they live, work and socialise as a method to gain new insights and opportunities for the designer (IDEO, 2013). This method as per the majority of empirical research tends to simplify complex situations in order to provide a set of criteria that can then guide a design intervention to such problems. This paper explores how it is important to not only understand the contextual situation of a problem, but also a much broader range of contexts and influences which constitute the ecology of the problem. Ecology Immersion can be defined over and above the designers’ immersion into a specific context by the further discovery and exploration of other connected contexts. The designer is able to map a broader system by immersing her/himself in these interconnected contexts and hence foreseeing how a proposed intervention could interact in the greater ecology of the problem. An example could be the effect the seemingly independent biological system and economic system could have on a small-scale agricultural project. This improved understanding then allows for the design intervention to have a better foundation in terms of the systems it relies on, which potentially aids the final intervention’s resilience. This paper explores and criticises the design process of a household farming kit as an example of such a method. This critique will offer potential insight into future applications of this method in the field of Industrial Design and its potential application in other design disciplines to encourage greater resilience.
  • Di Lucchio
  • Lorenzo Loredana
  • Imbesi
Di Lucchio, Loredana, and Lorenzo Imbesi. 2015. Design to Feed the World: 100