Africa Food Systems Forum 2024

The overarching goal of the African countries is to build productive, nutritious, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable food systems that have the power to accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. While substantial progress has been made, overall, action to transform is not yet advancing at the speed or scale required and considerable challenges remain.

The Africa Food Systems Forum 2024 annual summit will be a timely opportunity to convene diverse stakeholders, including world leaders, investors, academia, farmers’ organizations, and the private sector, to spotlight innovations, technologies, best practices, business models, policy delivery mechanisms, and investments to accelerate food systems transformation in Africa and beyond, with youth and women at the helm.

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Crop Trust participation

Harnessing Africa's Vegetable Heritage

Side event | 2 September 2024

 

African vegetables are more adapted to climate change compared to staple crops, but the vegetable biodiversity in Africa is also poorly conserved. Priority actions for safeguarding these priceless genetic resources for food and agriculture were developed and outlined in a comprehensive 10-year ‘rescue plan.’ The African Vegetable Biodiversity Rescue Plan will be formally launched on Monday, 2 September 2024 during a special side event, ‘Harnessing Africa’s Vegetable Heritage’, at the start of the Africa Food Systems Forum (2-6 September), in Kigali, Rwanda.

The side event will introduce the value of opportunity vegetable crops for Africa and their key role in delivering nutrition security. Also called forgotten, neglected, orphan or underutilized crops, opportunity crops include cereals, tubers, trees and many more. The Rescue Plan, however, focus on nutrient-dense vegetables. It spotlights that vegetable biodiversity across the continent (and across the world) is being lost at an alarming rate, and is poorly conserved - including genetic material that has the potential to be of extreme value for farmers or future plant breeding programs. 

The Rescue Plan is built around three innovation areas:

1. a continent-wide effort to collect, characterize and conserve vegetable germplasm;
2. use of long-term storage technologies (keeping seeds viable for over 100 years);
3. scaled utilization of vegetable biodiversity for research and increased vegetable production for income, nutrition and employment creation.

The Rescue Plan focuses on strengthening of African capacity in biodiversity rescue, management, regulations and policies. The African Vegetable Biodiversity Rescue Plan is a truly groundbreaking initiative that, when implemented, will make significant impacts on improving nutrition security, livelihoods, and resilience to climatic and economic shocks.

Speakers

• Gabriel Rugalema, Associate Director General and Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa, World Vegetable Center
• Marco Wopereis, Director General, World Vegetable Center
• Sarada Krishnan, Director of Programs, Global Crop Diversity Trust
• Godfrey Bahiigwa, Director, Agriculture and Rural Development, African Union Commission
• Anna Nelson, Deputy Special Envoy for Global Food Security, US Department of State
• Kent Nnadozie, Secretary, FAO International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
• Mary Abukutsa-Onyango, Professor, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kenya
• Clement Adjorlolo, Head, Agriculture and Rural Transformation, AUDA-NEPAD, African Union Commission
• Sognigbé N’Danikou, Scientist – Traditional Vegetables, World Vegetable Center, Tanzania
• Gloria Otieno, Scientist, Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, Kenya
• Hon. Mandla Tshawuka, Minister of Agriculture, Eswatini

Facilitated by Susan Mugwe

Speaking Engagements of Stefan Schmitz, Executive Director

• Tuesday, September 3rd,10:00 - 17:00 (CAT): Panel discussion Topic 3: The Status of National Seed Systems” during the “Knowledge Market Platform” *exact time TBD
• Wednesday, 4th September, 9:00 - 11:00 (CAT): “Panel discussion 2” during the “Plenary: Food Systems and Nutrition”