4 takeaways from the Africa Food Systems Forum

KIGALI, Rwanda — The Africa Food Systems Forum ended with a set of outcomes to help the continent battle a worsening hunger crisis, as leaders lobbied development partners for support ahead of a new continent-wide agricultural policy due out early next year. Nine heads of state, 37 ministers, seven former heads of state, and 40 heads of international agencies were among the nearly 5,000 attendees in Kigali, Rwanda, last week for the continent’s largest agriculture conference. It was hosted by AGRA, formerly known as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. The forum aimed to encourage investment in the continent’s agrifood sector, and it brought some high-dollar commitments: Norway launched a $35 million fund to support small- and medium-sized agri-food enterprises, while the United Kingdom's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office said it will provide £25 million for AgDevCo, a U.K.-based social impact investor that invests in African agribusinesses. Small- and medium-sized enterprises participating in the forum’s agribusiness dealroom sought $70 million in investment. “The AFSF goes beyond an annual summit. We are a diverse ecosystem. It is about jobs and opportunities. It is about feeding our people on our continent and outside our continent,” the forum’s managing director Amath Pathé Sene said in an interview with Devex. Here’s what else happened in Kigali — and what comes next: 1. Without political commitment, Africa is far from ending hunger African leaders acknowledged they are not winning the battle against food insecurity despite the continent containing some 60% of the world’s uncultivated arable land, along with its rich natural resources and biodiversity. Hunger shocks affect about 20% to 25% of Africa’s population, malnutrition among children is high, many women of reproductive age suffer from anemia, and foods low in micronutrients have led to rising obesity, Nigeria’s former President Goodluck Jonathan said during a panel. Meanwhile, food demands and the continent’s population are growing at an average rate of about 3% per annum, with the population boom expected to hit 2.4 billion by 2050, said former Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn. Yet African governments’ public spending on agriculture is just 4.6%, falling short of the 10% target set by the African Union’s 2014 Malabo Declaration, which aimed to transform the continent’s agriculture and improve livelihoods by 2025. Meanwhile, Africa’s annual food import bill stands at $60 billion and is set to double by 2030 without a rescue plan, he said. “The journey of food from the farm to the plate is so long and often involves complex politics, sophisticated business, and other related networks,” Dessalegn said. “African food systems have not received the political attention they deserve. If you ask me how we came to this conclusion, I would say just look at the amount of investments we put into our food systems. Period.” 2. A new African agricultural agreement is coming As the Malabo Declaration approaches its end, African leaders at the forum discussed policies that need fixing ahead of the post-Malabo agenda that is set to be inaugurated in Kampala, Uganda, next year. The declaration has been the cornerstone of African agricultural policy for the past decade. The process to set the next ten-year strategy for the Kampala Declaration is now underway. Leaders at the forum discussed the need for African governments to increase public spending on agriculture to at least more than half the target set by the Malabo Declaration. They also discussed the need to reduce non-tariff barriers and export bans within the Africa Continental Free Trade Area to address food insecurity and ensure common prosperity. A draft of the declaration has been presented to the AU ahead of its launch in January 2025. It aims to reinforce the capacity of the continent’s smallholder farmers, integrate climate change into food systems transformation, and improve management of infrastructure that impacts productivity, Ibrahim Mayaki, the AU’s special envoy on food systems, told Devex in an interview. The Kampala Declaration will leverage lessons learned from Malabo to incorporate smarter ways of battling hunger in the continent, transform food systems, and industrialize the continent through increased manufacturing and processing capabilities. It aims to create 20 million jobs per year over the next 20 years, he said. “We are evaluating what has been implemented in terms of investment, private sector participation, and public sector resources allocation,” Mayaki said. “Out of the feedback of this knowledge, we are shaping the post-Malabo which will be adopted in January 2025.” 3. Africa needs more donor funding to transform its food systems The forum attempted to hold leaders accountable for Malabo's failures by challenging them to share analytics between countries and also strengthen investments, collaboration, and best practices. Meanwhile, the African Food Systems Parliamentary Network, or AFSPaN, accused African governments of siloing institutions, thus preventing efficiency across the continent. Instead, the organization proposed that government ministries should harmonize any programs related to food systems so that they can have a common direction. The siloed approach has led to mistrust among politicians, civil society, the development community, and the private sector, according to AFSPaN Secretary-General Jeremy Lissouba, who is also a member of Parliament in the Republic of Congo. “Yes, you can blame policymakers for making bad choices on food systems transformation,” he said. “But the same can be said of international organizations and NGOs. Many of them are working on similar topics but everybody has their own slice of the field that they focus on. What is needed is to build bridges so that the different actors can find solutions that have cross-cutting effects.” That will require collaboration between governments, the private sector, and other partners to create food environments that offer healthy, affordable, and sustainable diets, according to Afshan Khan, an assistant secretary-general of the United Nations and coordinator of the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement. It will mean reviewing taxes on farm inputs and subsidies that help underserved populations; putting in place regulatory systems that encourage smallholder producers and micro, small, and medium enterprises, or MSMEs, to produce quality food at affordable prices; getting better at fortification; and supporting the growth of indigenous crops, she said. “I think for me what was interesting at the forum was a look at some of the principles and issues to put good nutritious food at the heart of the continent’s production agenda,” Khan said. “Smallholder farmers provide a lot of significantly quality nutritious food, yet we are seeing that malnutrition is responsible for nearly half of child deaths.” “What we also heard is that a lot of the donor funding for nutrition has plateaued. But we know, for example, that treatment of malnutrition offers really high rates of return for every dollar spent. Many of these smallholder farmers are women. If they are not suffering from micronutrient deficiencies like anemia, not only is it good for their health and the next generation of children that are born, but they have more productive labor,” she added. 4. African food systems need African-led philanthropy Africa can reduce its reliance on external finance sources if local financial institutions can come up with innovations that do not risk-profile MSMEs, said Adesuwa Ifedi, the senior vice president of Africa programs at Heifer International, in a panel. It is African-led philanthropies that can bridge the external financing sources gap in order to support agriculture MSMEs working closely with farmers, she said. These MSMEs face instability that only development leaders who have grown up within African local food systems can understand and solve — instead of curated profiles that have been fed to external financiers, she said. “That is why innovating from the ground up is a game changer,” she said. “The MSMEs business DNA is about agility, it is about waking up every day and solving the problems that arise. These are realities of innovators who understand how to maneuver in a system that is consistently complex and difficult to understand.” Editor’s note: AGRA facilitated Devex's travel and logistics for this reporting. Devex maintains full editorial independence and control of the content.