4Cities4Dev

This is a local community campaign seeking to raise awareness about food consumption and promote initiatives revolving around the Slow Food philosophy. To this end, the 4Cities4Dev project, co-financed by the European Union, involves collaboration between the cities of Turin, Tours, Bilbao and Riga, and Slow Food International, with the aim of boosting awareness of responsible consumption and providing education about the consequences of traditional food consumption. The project brings together the cities, in their capacity as active drivers of local policies and decentralised cooperation, and the Slow Food approach to development, which is based on the involvement of food communities, citizens and consumers.

The campaign has seen the four European cities "adopt" seven food communities in Senegal, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Kenya, Mali and the Ivory Coast. This "adoption" has given the participating cities the opportunity to gain a first-hand insight into how these African communities function according to Slow Food criteria, and to support them. The four European cities have therefore come into contact with groups of people in the African countries that produce, transform and distribute sustainable, quality food, while maintaining a strong social, economic, cultural and historical bond with their territory.

The community at the Mananara Vanilla Presidium in Madagascar is supported by the city of Riga. This presidium was created with the collaboration of the NGO Intercoopération, the company Development Environmental Consultant (DEC) and the Madagascan National Association for the Management of Protected Areas (ANGAP). Thanks to the support of the presidium, 900 producers have organised themselves into a cooperative, working to improve cultivation and processing techniques and to market the vanilla.

For its part, the city of Bilbao is supporting the Pokot Ash Yoghurt Presidium in Kenya. Communities in the villages of Tartar and Soibee have long produced an unusual yoghurt made by mixing milk from cows or goats with the ash of the native cromwo tree. This Slow Food project set out to protect a highly distinctive product, one that is synonymous with these communities, by looking to improve the health of the animals used to produce the yoghurt and to enhance the production process to make it safer and more hygienic, with a view to increasing the quality of the product, all the while respecting local traditions.

4Cities4Dev puts food at the centre of a cooperation model that seeks to drive changes in consumption habits. Through the Slow Food approach, the project brings together three aspects that are usually separated: biodiversity protection and environmental sustainability, support for local communities and their traditions and culture, and economic freedom for producers.

Food safety and protection, animal care and community work take on particular significance in Africa, the continent that has become a symbol of hunger in the world.