World Food Day 2024: Get to know Julia Virol, PhD at Wageningen University (Netherlands)

2 December 2024

Ensuring the right to food for all requires collective action to tackle hunger and poverty. This means prioritising the production and consumption of diverse, safe and nutritious foods, while building resilience against shocks, vulnerabilities, and stresses.

The academic community plays a crucial role in this mission. Research, data, technology, and innovation can be powerful tools for enhancing food safety and food security, as well as for transforming agrifood systems for a better future and a better life for all.

That’s why UPRISE is taking action by training 11 PhD students under joint EU-AU supervision to become future leaders and food safety ambassadors for Africa. These researchers will play a key role in supporting food safety risk assessment and management to reduce mycotoxin levels, by developing guides, toolkits, early warning systems and microbiome- based innovations.

Get to know Julia Virol, PhD at Wageningen University (Netherlands).

Enhancing African Food Safety Systems requires coordinated action at different levels, in particular, developing new technical solutions to mitigate food safety hazards, creating a food safety culture among entrepreneurs and designing national regulatory systems and incentives. Tackling the last two, Julia’s socioeconomic research explores the nexus between entrepreneurship and food safety in Africa. The study aims to better characterise African informal entrepreneurs to design effective food safety interventions that protect domestic consumers and support agrifood entrepreneurs’ livelihoods.

Informal workers make up 97% of the agrifood sector on the continent. These workers are neither protected nor regulated by their state. There is still a lack of granular understanding of informal entrepreneurship and its nuances (scale, rationale for existence, etc.) in the agrifood economy. Therefore, the scope of this study covers (1) the drivers and typology of informal entrepreneurship, (2) the behavioural factors that could explain adoption -or lack thereof- of food safety practices, (3) the assessment of the effects of potential interventions along the value-chains. UP-RISE focuses on traditional fermented foods, which are often produced by women entrepreneurs. Therefore, Julia uses a gender-lens to conduct her research.

Aligned with the UP-RISE objectives, Julia’s findings should provide tools to understand and optimise the adoption of food safety practices limiting mycotoxins contamination while promoting agrifood entrepreneurship. This participates in key developmental goals of food security, health, decent work and gender equality.

Video: Julia Virol

Gallery