When Kenya opened the Africa Food Show 2026 Conference at KICC this week under the theme “Transforming Agrifood Systems for Healthy Diets: From Seed to Plate,” it was three government voices Secretary to the Cabinet Mercy Wanjau, Principal Secretary Agriculture Dr. Kipronoh Ronoh and Principal Secretary Livestock Jonathan Mueke who first set the tone. But it was the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Representative in Kenya, Farayi Zimudzi, who gave the gathering its sharpest provocation: nutrition advice alone cannot put healthy food on anyone’s plate.
Speaking on behalf of FAO before a room that included IFAD Country Director Matteo Marchisio, Malaysia’s High Commissioner Ruzami Mohamad, and KALRO Director General Dr. Patrick Ketiem, Zimudzi framed the conference theme as a single, uncomfortable question: is every actor in the food system from soil to seed, production to trade actually working toward diets people can eat healthily?
Her answer was a careful “not yet.” Kenya has made real gains in production and value addition, she acknowledged, but the country carries what nutrition experts call a double burden undernutrition and micronutrient deficiency sitting alongside rising obesity and diet-related disease. Health messaging on its own, she argued, cannot fix that. Food has to be produced, kept safe, processed without losing its nutritional value, moved to market, and critically made available, affordable and desirable.
Zimudzi’s most striking evidence came from a recent Kenyan study: tomatoes, kale, spinach and onions sampled from markets in Nairobi and Nakuru showed pesticide residues exceeding applicable limits in many cases the same vegetables Kenyans are routinely told to eat more of. Her point, echoing WHO guidance, was blunt: a diet must be safe to be healthy. It’s a finding that dovetails with Agriculture PS Ronoh’s own remarks earlier in the conference on the newly enacted Food and Feed Safety Control Coordination Act, suggesting food safety is emerging as the connective tissue running through every ministry’s remarks this year.
Zimudzi also pushed delegates to think harder about processing not as a threat to nutrition, but as a lever that cuts both ways. Processing can extend shelf life and reduce losses, she said, but the sector must now ask how to protect nutritional quality inside that process: less salt, less sugar, fewer unhealthy fats, without pricing nutritious processed foods out of reach for ordinary households.
Perhaps her boldest turn was tracing the problem all the way back to the ground. Citing Kenya’s 2011 National Micronutrient Survey, which flagged zinc deficiency as a significant public health concern, Zimudzi asked researchers a question with no easy answer: how much do we actually know about how soil health, crop varieties, storage and processing shape the nutrients that finally reach a Kenyan plate? It’s a question, she noted, that agriculture cannot answer alone, and neither can health it needs researchers, universities, manufacturers, farmers, regulators, traders and consumers “around the same table.”
Beyond the podium, FAO’s presence signals ongoing work: the organization is partnering with the Government of Kenya to develop Food Systems-Based Dietary Guidelines a multispectral effort designed to move past simply telling people what to eat, toward addressing what has to change across the system to make healthy eating possible in the first place.
Taken together with the earlier addresses, a pattern is now unmistakable. Wanjau called for whole-of-government coordination. Ronoh laid out governance, science, and financing and community pillars. Mueke insisted livestock and feed safety belong at the centre, not the margins. And Zimudzi’s closing appeal tied it all together: “Let us connect the dots from seed to plate.” Responsibility, she said, cannot sit with the Ministry of Health alone farmers, researchers, manufacturers, traders, regulators, investors, development partners and consumers all have a role to play.
Her closing measure of success was perhaps the conference’s most quotable line yet: that Kenya’s progress should be judged not only by how much food it produces, but by whether its food systems deliver safe, diverse, nutritious and affordable food to every citizen while protecting the livelihoods and environment that produce it.
