The African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF), Africa’s premier forum for driving the food and agriculture agenda in the continent, will host its 12th annual summit under the theme Grow. Nourish. Reward – Bold Actions for Resilient Food Systems.
AGRF seeks explicitly to draw these stakeholders around a common purpose – to unleash the full potential of Africa’s millions of smallholder farmers and their families who earn their livelihoods from small-scale farms and provide about 80% of the food and agricultural products consumed across the continent. The AGRF recognizes that Africa is rising, with signs of prosperity and progress in the lives of millions of individuals and entire economies. But for all of the signs of progress, Africa still needs to move from food shortage to surplus, drive beneficial continental trade, and create millions of jobs and opportunities, particularly for women and youth. Business and progress as usual is not enough for these aspirations, so the Forum looks at how stakeholders can do more and do it more successfully.
Bram Govaerts panel discussion
CIMMYT Director General Bram Govaerts will be taking part in a panel discussion on Thursday, September 8, 11am-1pm, on Bringing the latest in appropriate technology to African food systems, SMEs, and farmers: Mechanization, Digital Tools, Irrigation, and Energy.
COVID-19 has exacerbated challenges to Africa’s food and agriculture sector and to its millions of smallholder farmers. At the same time, the pandemic has accelerated innovative efforts to develop and deploy the transformative power of digital technology to address these problems in ways that leapfrog past practices and traditional solutions. This session will showcase the latest on new digital technologies and infrastructure developments targeted at farmers and SMEs across the continent.
Soil acidity side event
CIMMYT is jointly hosting side event on Monday, September 5, between 2pm-3.30pm titled Managing soil acidity for resilient food systems on the African continent. Alongside colleagues from the African Union Commission (AUC), East African Community (EAC) Secretariat and Alliance for a Green Revolution if Africa (AGRA), the event is about giving evidence on how promoting the production and use of the lime to rehabilitate acid soils is important for improved productivity and resilient food security fits very well in this year’s AGRF theme. It also fits well in the African Union Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit to be held in June 2023. Managing acidic soils is critical to ensure the fertilizer full potential. Getting more productive and healthy soils is key for smallholder farmers’ resilience and healthy food systems.
The objective of the side event is to share data/information to create awareness on the benefit of liming to reduce the soil acidity. The outcome will serve as an input for the 2023 African Union Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit and the Fertilizer and Soil Health Action Plan.
The expected outcomes are as follow:
- Analytics and evidence (of soil acidity, lime deposit and the benefit of liming in terms of improving productivity to feed the growing population on the African continent) presented and shared.
- Challenges limiting the production of quality lime highlighted and solutions identified.
- Challenges limiting the use of quality lime from smallholder farmers perspectives highlighted and solutions identified.
- Lessons from countries shared for scaling up.
- Needed policy reforms at national and regional level highlighted.
- Input to the African Union Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit through technical documents to be shared.
