Diagnosing Food Systems Policy Coherence – a practical guide with Dr Stella Nordhagen

Wednesday 24 September 2025

Addressing interlinked food-related challenges requires integrated approaches that work across food systems, as opposed to in sectoral silos. Food systems policy coherence (FSPC) strives for policies across sectors to be aligned, as opposed to working against one another. While FSPC is an appealing concept, in practice it is very difficult to assess. GAIN, working with the pan-African food policy thinktank Akademiya2063, have developed a new diagnostic tool that can: 1) identify areas of coherence and non-coherence between food system policies and key societal goals and 2) suggest ways to improve coherence. The tool has been applied in 10 countries across Africa and Asia. It has also begun to be applied in the UK and Switzerland. In this presentation, Stella Nordhagen of GAIN introduce the tool and explained how it works. She also highlighted key results from the first country applications and outlined where food policy is doing well and what could be done better to support holistic food systems transformation.

Stella Nordhagen is a Research Lead with GAIN, where she oversees research related to food systems in Africa and Asia. Her areas of research interest include market-based approaches to improving diets and nutrition, food supply chains, food environments, food choice, and linkages between nutrition and environmental sustainability. Stella holds an MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge.

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