Published August 18, 2026 | Version v3
Model Open

2026 South Africa FABLE Calculator UP48 v2.3

Authors/Creators

Description

The FABLE Calculator (FABLE-C) is an open tool created in 2018 for the FABLE initiative (fableconsortium.org).
Since its launch, it has been developed, regularly updated and improved through the release of update packages by the FABLE Secretariat in collaboration with members of the FABLE Consortium (source: FABLE Calculator documentation, 2020).

This version of the FABLE Calculator for South Africa builds on a version created by the FABLE Secretariat on 01 2025 including all update packages until 48 and incorporates the latest developments implemented as part of the CHOICE project. 

These developments aim to improve the representation of consumer heterogeneity and behavioural change in food-system pathways.

Three new scenario options have been integrated:

  • Heterogeneous consumer scenario: represents differences in dietary patterns across population groups rather than relying on a single average national diet.
  • Intra-food-group substitution scenario: enables substitution between individual food products belonging to the same FABLE food group. This allows dietary transitions to capture changes in the composition of food groups, such as a shift from maize towards sorghum and millet within cereals.
  • Cohort scenario: enables dietary interventions targeting specific age groups and distinguishes between temporary and persistent behavioural change. Under temporary adoption, individuals progressively return to their business-as-usual dietary trajectory after leaving the targeted cohort. Under persistent adoption, dietary changes are maintained as individuals age, allowing successive cohorts adopting the intervention to accumulate over time. This makes it possible to explore how the long-term impacts of dietary interventions depend on the persistence of behavioural change.

Together, these developments provide greater flexibility for exploring how heterogeneous consumer behaviours and different patterns of dietary change can influence the future evolution of South Africa's food and land-use system.

Notes

The license Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike 4.0 (CC-BY-SA 4.0) is used; It implies that:

  • You can share, copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially;
  • You can adapt, remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
  • You must give appropriate credit using the DOI and citation of this publication, and indicate which changes were made.
  • You must distribute under the same license your contributions when remixing, transforming, or building upon this tool, without additional restrictions.    

Moreover, the FABLE Calculator is a collaborative tool. Please:

  • Inform the authors (info.fable@unsdsn.org) about how you have used the tool and share feedback on your experience. 
  • Share with the authors, or to make public domain, any material that you have developed for training and/or stakeholder engagement purposes using this FABLE Calculator. 

Files

Files (15.3 MB)

Name Size Download all
md5:a22225338285e8093a5239c575b83493
15.3 MB Download

Additional details

Funding

European Commission
CHOICE - Mainstreaming Integrated Assessment Models by embedding behavioural change and actor heterogeneity, and increasing their outreach to citizens, communities and industrial actors 101081617

Dates

Created
2026-02