South Africa: Innovating New Solutions with Existing Resources

How do you collect information on millers’ compliance to fortification standards and legislation without regulatory monitoring inspections?

The South Africa Department of Health and FFI may have found the answer in an existing data collection system: the South African Grain Information Service (SAGIS).

In South Africa, food safety inspectors, known as Environmental Health Officers, regulate a wide array of foods and industries. However, these inspectors have limited capacity to assess fortification and, additionally, they do not carry a mandate to assess fortification compliance due to the country’s decentralized governmental structure. The national government can “request,” not “instruct,” provinces to conduct an inspection and provinces can “request,” not “instruct,” municipalities to do the same. (1)

Given these challenges, the Department of Health began to explore an alternative means of collecting compliance information through an already-existing data collection system, SAGIS. SAGIS in a non-profit, independent data collection system with the goal of gathering, processing, analyzing, and timely distribution of reliable agronomic information to key stakeholders. Millers in South Africa trust SAGIS and report production figures to the organization on a monthly basis.

If SAGIS includes an additional data point, namely monthly premix usage, in their system, fortification compliance could be inferred using the premix reconciliation calculation without having to regularly deploy inspectors to each producer. Instead, the system would identify noncompliant mills that inspectors could visit to assist with practices and procedures. Discussions are ongoing with SAGIS regarding the collection of this additional data point to infer national compliance. (2)

(1) Randall, P.; P Cubed, Johannesburg, South Africa. Personal communication, 16 November 2020.

(2) de Hoop, M.; National Department of Health, Pretoria, South Africa. Personal communication, 20 July 2020.