23 Oct 2025

Sustainable food production demands multi-disciplinarity, says University of Agriculture and natural Resources (BUAN) vice chancellor, Professor Ketlhatlogile Mosepele.

Speaking at BUAN and Capacitating One Health in Eastern and Southern Africa (COHESA) meeting, in Gaborone on Wednesday Prof. Mosepele said sustainable food production demanded adapting an integrated approach that recognised the value of healthy ecosystems that extolled the virtues of human health and acknowledge on the importance of healthy animals. 

He said a silo approach was not only counter-productive but also regressive because ‘we are compelled to walk together on this journey and work assiduously to develop sustainable agri-food systems. One-health is not an option, but a critical necessity.’

Prof. Mosepele cited challenges like emerging pandemics, anti-microbial resistance and food insecurity, as demanding collective action and integrated policy-frameworks. 

He said the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) reported that 75 per cent of globally emerging infectious diseases, 36 per cent of which were associated with food producing animals were zoonotic diseases and also acted as magnifiers of wildlife pathogens.

“Therefore, there is a compelling case for us to adopt a One-Health approach comprehensively to not only achieve food security but also to realise the objectives of the UNSDGs. It was for this reason that the COHESA project was developed,” he said.

Prof. Mosepele said the COHESA project revealed that Botswana had a robust foundation for One-Health with broad, multi-sectoral cross-cutting networks across government, academia and external partners. He said critical coordination was already handled at the highest levels in government and the academia.

Reporting on the One-Health Net-Mapping results, BUAN Prof. Moatlhodi Kgosimore said One-Health was to optimise the interconnection between people, animals, plants and their shared environment.

Prof. Kgosimore said they had to ensure optimal outcomes and realised the expected results. He said they needed to work on the technical and societal issues while societal issues were the ones they were usually omitted making adoption an issue.

Prof. Kgosimore also said the One-Health issues they came across were inadequate cross-collaborations which was key. He further said there was inability to adopt health solutions to national context and cascading of solutions.

Prof. Kgosimore said they also found inadequate research infrustructire, limited funding as well as integration of efforts as contributors to inadequate implementation of One-Health.

“So we really need to come together as different stakeholders to make sure that health outcomes are realised,” he said. ENDS