Leading food companies are lending their knowledge and expertise to an initiative which harnesses intellectual philanthropy to tackle food insecurity in Africa.
The Partners in Food Solutions (PFS) platform brings together experts from six companies: General Mills, Cargill, DSM (Dutch), Bühler (Swiss), Hershey and Ardent Mills. The pool of retirees and volunteers from these firms offer invaluable industry knowhow to African entrepreneurs and innovators. The idea is to use intellectual philanthropy – the sharing of knowhow – rather than money to build lasting change.
“PFS is a new and unique approach in helping African countries feed their own people and build sustainable food value chains,” explained Jeff Dykstra, CEO PFS. “PFS has a lot of knowhow and can aggregate and share that with promising high potential companies we believe can have a transformative effect on food insecurity in Africa.”
And it has already helped hundreds of companies.
Jeff added: “Partners in Food Solutions was born from the clear-eyed passion of General Mills leaders and employees who believed that the company had a responsibility to help improve food security and nutrition throughout Africa. This work that has allowed us to engage and improve hundreds of food companies to benefit millions of consumers and farmers would have never happened without the vision and commitment of General Mills.”
