Nathan led the team designing a £35m programme for DFID’s Africa regional department. The programme aims to make regional food staple markets work better, reducing price volatility and supporting growth. The programme is currently being implemented.

The design focused on identifying ways to enable food markets throughout East and Southern Africa to be integrated, and to overcome the entrenched market and government failures that are so prevalent, and which prevent these markets from developing and deepening.

It aimed to harness private sector expertise and willingness to invest in staple foods once risks, particularly risks from unpredictable public sector interventions, had become manageable. The programme encourages linkages to the public sector in order to support an environment that develops regional trade in food and build market systems so that prices are less volatile, farmers have secure markets and a virtuous circle of investment, increased production and market deepening emerges.