Institutions ready to offer degree programmes in food safety

East African universities and higher education institutions should use the available wealth of human resources and physical infrastructure to offer a BSc programme to develop the scientific workforces to enable the East African Community to benefit from trading in agricultural products on the African continent through the African Union’s African Continental Free Trade Area agreements.

This is the main message that emerged from a report titled ‘Curriculum Benchmarks on Food Safety: Do the universities in East Africa have the capacity to implement?’ published by the Kenya-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in April 2024.

The East African Community (EAC) is a regional intergovernmental organisation of eight partner states, namely Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania. The EAC headquarters are in Arusha, Tanzania.

“Food safety has emerged as one of the key pillars in the One Health implementation and in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. A number of these goals (1, 2, 3, 5 and 6) are unlikely to be met if the world does not track the progress in attaining food safety at the country level,” according to the report.

Status of food safety in higher education

The report notes that, despite the existence of potential opportunities for jobs in the public and private sectors for graduates with a BSc degree in food safety, there is no food safety programme at undergraduate level as universities in the EAC are offering only courses under other educational programmes that are directly or indirectly related to food safety. These programmes include food production, food processing and food policy and legislation.

There is a difference in the number and type of courses each university is teaching, according to the report. Many of the lecturers hold PhD degrees – which means there are adequate human resources.

The report points out that universities are utilising other professionals from industry, research institutions and universities in the North and South to deliver both core and supportive courses. “This approach helps the students see the relevance of the courses they are taking and get introduced to the broader profession,” the report emphasises. “These institutions are partners in student internships and practical placements to widen their understanding.”

The report points out that, across the EAC universities, the benchmark core courses are currently taught in programmes in which the emphasis is not necessarily on food safety. These courses attract on average 509 students per course across 26 courses at 12 universities, while supportive courses attract 945 students across the 12 universities.

The 12 universities that participated in the research are in five partner states. They are the University of Juba and Upper Nile University (South Sudan), University of Rwanda and University of Global Health Equity (Rwanda), University of Burundi and Hope Africa University (Burundi), University of Kinshasa and Official University of Bukavu (L’Université Officielle de Bukavu, or UOB), (DRC), University of Nairobi and Moi University (Kenya), Sokoine University of Agriculture and the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences in Tanzania.

Institutions are prepared and willing

The report adds that the popular mode of delivering the course content at the EAC universities remains lectures, laboratory practicums, and other practical experiences such as industrial attachment and special projects. Online and blended modes of course content delivery are new and have not been widely used, as only six out of the 12 universities are teaching a proportion of the benchmark core areas using online and blended modes of content delivery.

“The available physical infrastructure, and the willingness of the faculty at the universities to launch the food safety programme during the 2024-25 academic year, taken together, point to great existing preparedness by the higher institutions of education to launch this programme,” the report notes. There are only two food safety programmes offered at the graduate level, according to the report.

The report states: “If the 12 universities mounted the BSc in food safety with an average of 500 graduates yearly, this would reduce the huge deficit in the number of experts in food safety to manage the many food value chains and offer such services also in the informal markets that are crucial in the supply of safe food to the majority of the rural and urban populations.”

Equipment needed for training

The region is oversupplied with unemployed graduates but graduates from this programme will find employment in several sectors to enhance food safety along the farm-to-fork continuum, the report points out.

“Universities have the minimum equipment to enable them to start the BSc in food safety. However, universities will require an array of equipment to help train an effective hands-on workforce in solving food safety issues,” note the researchers.

They add that universities wishing to translate the benchmarks into a food safety curriculum could utilise the expertise available at other universities in the EAC and Global South to teach courses where they do not have faculty with PhD qualifications.

The report points out that, in the courses where faculty with PhD qualifications are not available, online, and blended modes of content delivery could be used by experts from other EAC universities to deliver the course content, without physically leaving their workplaces.

“This approach would offer the universities with staff deficiencies time to train or employ while having the opportunity to mount the BSc in food safety,” the report emphasises. “Using faculties from other universities in the South would also help the universities to benchmark their programmes with peers in the South.”

To fast-track the initial launch of the programme, the universities ranked the top three issues they would need assistance with as the development of the BSc in food safety curriculum, influencing accreditation of the programme by respective commissions for university education, and empowering existing staff to deliver the courses with a food safety emphasis, the report said.