This August, in Dakar, Senegal, the Pan-African Legal Network on Food & Nutrition (PALNEF) was formally inaugurated. Convened during the Global Health Advocacy Incubator’s (GHAI) Third Pan-African Legal Capacity Strengthening Symposium on Food and Nutrition Governance, the network is now registered in Tanzania as an international legal network, complete with its own constitution and governing structure.
Twenty-eight members from 12 countries used the occasion to ratify a five-year strategy centered on building a legal community of practice that advances food and nutrition policy across Africa through the instrumentality of law.
It’s a milestone three years in the making. GHAI first proposed the idea for the network at its inaugural symposium in Accra in 2023, and PALNEF has since grown through subsequent gatherings in Mombasa and Dakar, and through sustained virtual strategic engagements.
The Legal Symposium brought together lawyers, public-interest litigators, advocates, researchers and civil society leaders from eight African countries for three days of working sessions, covering everything from the constitutional and human rights foundations of food policy to front-of-pack warning labels, marketing restrictions on ultra-processed products and strategic litigation against industry interests.
The fourth day of the Symposium was reserved exclusively for PALNEF members to chart the network’s path forward. To mark this new chapter, we sat down with PALNEF’s chairperson, Emmanuel Ukaegbu, and Secretariat William Kivuyo, to discuss what the network’s formal establishment means, the road that led here, and where they see it going next.
Why did the continent need a network like PALNEF, and what gap was it built to fill?
PALNEF was conceived from the recognition that Africa’s growing food and nutrition challenges demand a stronger, more coordinated legal response. The continent continues to grapple with persistent malnutrition, a rising burden of diet-related non-communicable diseases, unhealthy dietary transitions, aggressive corporate influence, significant policy gaps and weak enforcement of existing laws. Alongside this, there was a clear need for a dedicated platform bringing together lawyers and legal practitioners with expertise in food, nutrition and public health to develop jurisprudence and deepen legal advocacy across the continent. PALNEF was therefore built to fill a specific legal and professional gap connecting lawyers working on public health, food and nutrition across African jurisdictions so they can share legal strategies, develop evidence-based interventions, support policy and legislative reform, build capacity of legal practitioners and deploy litigation strategically in defense of the right to adequate food and nutrition.
Now that you have formally launched the network, what is your vision and strategic objectives?
PALNEF’s vision is to become Africa’s leading legal network advancing the right to adequate food, optimal nutrition and sustainable food systems that protect health and well-being for all. Its mission is to advance sustainable and equitable food systems through policy and legal reform, regulatory enforcement, public interest litigation and industry accountability. Over the 2027–2031 strategy period, our work is organized around five priorities: strengthening legal responses to food and beverage industry interference; building Communities of Practice; strengthening public interest litigation on food and nutrition rights; expanding regional and cross-regional cooperation, including with allied networks in Latin America and Asia; and building a stronger, more responsive and better-resourced institution capable of sustaining this work for the long term.
What are the biggest legal challenges advocates within the civil society organization (CSO) space face in advancing food and nutrition policy across Africa?
The Strategic Plan identifies weak enforcement of food laws, fragmented legal frameworks across countries, limited institutional and financial capacity, political resistance to regulation and industry interference and regulatory capture as significant obstacles. At the judicial level, courts in many African countries and on the regional level face institutional and structural constraints in their ability to adjudicate socio-economic rights.
CSOs and legal advocates therefore face the added challenge of limited specialized legal capacity and insufficient mechanisms for sharing jurisprudence, evidence and litigation strategies across borders. PALNEF’s response is to strengthen lawyers’ capacity, facilitate legal cooperation, develop shared precedents and provide technical support for policy advocacy and strategic litigation across the continent.
Now that PALNEF is formally registered with its own constitution and governing structure, what does that change in practice for the network and its members?
Formalization gives PALNEF legal and institutional standing, allowing the network to move from a largely relational platform into a coordinated and accountable legal institution. Its governance structure now comprises the General Assembly, the Board, the Secretariat, Thematic Working Groups and country-level national affiliates, each with defined roles and lines of accountability. This structure provides a clear framework for decision-making, coordination, member participation and implementation of the strategic plan. Formalization also creates the institutional basis for expanding national affiliates across the continent, engaging the African Union and Regional Economic Communities, developing strategic partnerships, mobilizing resources and delivering concrete legal services and support to our members going forward.
Why were public interest litigation, countering food and beverage industry interference and Communities of Practice made top priorities, and what does that work look like on the ground?
These priorities respond to three connected needs: enforcing rights, protecting evidence-based policymaking and strengthening the legal community capable of doing both. Policy commitments can remain ineffective without legal accountability, while industry interference can obstruct measures on taxation, labelling and marketing. Communities of Practice provide the professional infrastructure for lawyers to share expertise, precedents and strategies rather than confront similar challenges in isolation. At the country level, PALNEF will support public interest litigation, pleadings, affidavits and evidence review; develop jurisprudence, model anti-interference clauses and legal toolkits; track industry narratives and policy engagements; and coordinate legal submissions to African Union and Regional Economic Community processes, while connecting practitioners with counterparts in Asia and Latin America for comparative learning.
