The Green Food Experience is extending across Africa, equipping future healthcare professionals to explore the links between nutrition, non-communicable diseases, and sustainable food systems through practical, student-led events.
As African countries strengthen efforts to address diet-related diseases, a global initiative is bringing nutrition education closer to where future healthcare professionals learn, eat and build their clinical skills.
The Green Food Experience (GFE), a mini-grant initiative by the Physicians Association for Nutrition (PAN) South Africa, is expanding beyond South Africa to support student-led campus food events in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Zambia and other African countries. Through grants of up to €200, the initiative enables eligible medical students to organise shared meals and educational discussions exploring how food choices relate to human health and planetary wellbeing.
The expansion comes at a time when nutrition is receiving renewed attention as a public-health priority across the continent. The World Health Organisation (WHO) identifies unhealthy diets as a major risk factor for disease and disability, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and certain cancers. It recommends varied, balanced diets that include a range of minimally processed foods, with dietary choices reflecting local food cultures and the foods available to communities.
National responses are also evolving. In February 2026, Kenya’s Ministry of Health inaugurated a National Food Environment Policies Steering Committee to strengthen action on unhealthy diets and diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Rwanda’s National Family and Nutrition Policy 2024 similarly identifies the prevention of overweight, obesity and diet-related NCDs as priorities.
Against this backdrop, the GFE offers an opportunity to engage future healthcare professionals in practical conversations about nutrition, disease prevention and the role of food in healthcare.
“Nutrition needs to be part of how future healthcare professionals think about health, not only something they discuss once a patient is already ill. The Green Food Experience gives students an opportunity to connect what they learn with the food they eat, the choices available in their communities, and the conversations they will eventually have with patients,” says Gabriela Lourenço, Community Co-ordinator at PAN South Africa.
“By making these conversations practical, collaborative and relevant to local food cultures, we can help students build a stronger appreciation of nutrition as an important part of health promotion and preventive care.”
From South Africa to a growing African network
The expansion builds on GFE activities at South African universities and extends the initiative to students in five additional African countries. Events already held in Kenya and Tanzania demonstrate how the model can be adapted to different university settings and local food cultures.
At Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology in Kenya, medical and nutrition students gathered for a GFE event focused on healthy foods and their contribution to healthier futures. The programme combined learning with a shared meal featuring a variety of dishes prepared by the university’s catering service.
Following the event, the university expressed interest in hosting similar activities across its four campus branches, creating scope for wider student engagement.
In Tanzania, healthcare students at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University College in Moshi came together on 27 August for a GFE dinner. The event brought future doctors, nurses, and physiotherapists together for an interprofessional discussion about nutrition in medical training, clinical practice, and student wellbeing.
Working with AIkama Organic Restaurant, students co-designed a menu inspired by the GFE toolkit, adapting recipes using locally available organic Tanzanian ingredients. The shared meal provided a setting for discussing healthy diets and their relationship with human and planetary health.
These activities illustrate how campus food events can create opportunities for students from different health disciplines to learn together and consider the relevance of nutrition to their future professional responsibilities.
Bringing African food cultures into nutrition conversations
Across Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Zambia, the expansion also creates opportunities to explore the nutritional value of locally available foods and the role of food traditions in supporting healthier diets.
Beans, cowpeas, lentils, whole grains, indigenous vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds can contribute to dietary diversity and provide important nutrients. Their availability, affordability, preparation methods, and place in local food cultures make them useful starting points for discussions about healthy diets.
Zambia’s food-based dietary guidelines, for example, encourage the consumption of varied foods, including whole grains, vegetables, fruits, pulses and nuts, while advising people to limit foods high in salt, sugar and unhealthy fats. The guidelines also recognise the importance of locally available foods and the sustainability of food systems.
For the GFE, this means that nutrition education need not rely on unfamiliar ingredients or imported food trends. Students can explore evidence-based dietary principles through foods and recipes that are relevant to their own communities.
The events also provide opportunities to discuss how dietary patterns can support the prevention of NCDs, while recognising that disease prevention involves multiple factors, including access to nutritious food, physical activity, healthcare, and wider social and economic conditions.
“Across Africa, we have an opportunity to connect evidence-based nutrition with the foods, knowledge and culinary traditions that are already part of our communities,” says Dr Heinrich Volmink, Chief Operating Officer at PAN South Africa.
“Supporting future healthcare professionals to understand these connections is an important step towards strengthening nutrition in healthcare and medical education. The Green Food Experience creates a practical space for students to learn from one another, engage with the evidence and consider how nutrition can contribute to healthier people and more sustainable food systems.”
A practical model for student-led action
The GFE is designed to make it easier for students to turn their interest in nutrition into a campus activity. Individual medical students and recognised student groups within medical faculties are eligible to apply, subject to the initiative’s requirements.
The process involves five steps: planning an event, completing an application, receiving approval, hosting the gathering and submitting a short report with photographs, key event highlights, and receipts.
Approved proposals receive a mini-grant of up to €200 to cover food costs. Each event must bring together at least 10 guests, creating an opportunity for shared learning and discussion without requiring student organisers to finance the food themselves.
The model is adaptable to different university settings, empowering medical students to collaborate with their peers and lead nutrition-focused learning experiences on campus.
As the initiative extends its reach across Africa, the aim is to support locally relevant events that encourage nutrition awareness, strengthen peer networks, and help future healthcare professionals recognise the importance of healthy diets in preventive and community health.
For participating students, a shared meal can be more than a social gathering. It can be an opportunity to examine the relationship between food and health, consider the role of local food systems and develop conversations that may inform their future work with patients and communities.
Medical students interested in hosting a Green Food Experience event can explore the initiative’s application requirements by joining the GFE Africa WhatsApp Community using this link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/KtSWMyNjdUw7NiODpOiYQo
