In addressing COVID-19, African governments should not forget the livelihoods as well as the food and nutrition security of their citizens. With over 70% of the workforce in the informal sector without any social protection and health insurance, the pandemic could have a devastating impact on income and livelihoods as well as food and nutrition security for workers up and down the food chain. There are ten steps African governments can take to ensure that their response to the disease takes food and nutrition security into account: 1. Protect food supply chains and consider them essential services; 2. Consider fiscal and monetary incentives; 3. Prioritize healthy diets; 4. Use food reserves wisely; 5. Keep food markets open while ensuring safety; 6. Use mobile cash transfers for social protection; 7. Protect farmers and food workers; 8. Prioritize gender equality; 9. Instill a sense of solidarity; and 10. Avoid export bans.

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Purpose While recent research has established that businesses can benefit from engaging with people at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP), the authors know little about the practices that managers can use to effectively strategize this ethically sound and financially attractive proposition and turn it into new business. Design/methodology/approach To address this gap, the authors reported on an action research study in which the authors collaborated with a major Mexican agribusiness, ANSA, to expand its market through value co-creation with the country’s poorest farmers. To shape the strategizing, the authors combined dynamic capability theory and options theory, and the authors used the asset hexagon framework to understand the BOP population’s needs. Findings The authors offer a detailed account of how ANSA’s management team collaborated downstream with distributors and farmers and upstream with suppliers to grow a new micro-franchise business that increases the well-being of the poorest farmers and creates additional business opportunities. The research describes how firms can strategize and implement new business ventures for co-creating value with the BOP population. The results are a process model and related propositions for strategizing value co-creation with BOP. Originality/value The authors offer new empirical insights, a grounded process model and model-related propositions on strategizing BOP options. As such, the study contributes to the BOP literature by joining critical ethics with actionable knowledge of how such efforts may unfold and by demonstrating how theory may be enacted and developed in the process.

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Technological and institutional innovationsin agri-food systems (AFSs) over the past century have brought dramatic advances in human well-being worldwide.