Five days of plenaries, investment summits, breakout sessions, workshops and side events – all focused on advancing Africa's agri-food systems.
Last updated: 11 August 2026. Please check back regularly for periodic updates.
Partner-hosted side events run in parallel throughout the day – see the Side Events tab above for the full listing.
The inaugural Africa Food Festival (AFF) co-hosted by African Food Fellowship, AFSF, and the City of Kigali, will take place alongside the 2026 AFSF Summit. As a flagship public event, it will feature a Culinary Village, bringing the Summit to life through African food, culture, music, crafts, and food business and investment.
The main objectives are: a) Celebrate Africa's diverse culinary heritage and culture, b) Showcase live cooking, competitions, and culinary dialogues c) Promote African cuisine as a driver of investment, tourism, and economic growth d) Connect food with agriculture, nutrition, and agri-food value chains through a vibrant street food experience e) Promote Made in Africa food products and local consumption f) Provide a platform for African chefs, youth entrepreneurs, and innovators g) Foster partnerships, investment, and food business opportunities h) Celebrate African music and culture to enhance the Festival experience and AFSF's visibility.
Agrifood systems in Africa face several barriers to attracting investment: high climate and weather risks, smallholder farmer fragmentation, limited collateral, long investment horizons, and underdeveloped rural financial markets.
Blended finance combines concessional capital (from governments, donors, and development finance institutions) with commercial capital (from banks, institutional investors, private equity, and agribusinesses) to make investments in agriculture more attractive and less risky.
This session will examine how targeted blended finance for both government and MSMEs, combining catalytic capital with technical assistance, can de‑risk enterprises and mobilize private capital to unlock the financing needed to scale and transform agrifood systems value chains.
Recent “big bets” in agrifood systems are increasingly centred on climate resilience, digital advisory networks, and synthetic biology but more importantly on African youth.
To guide where the continent directs scarce investment and finance, the research sector must act as a critical filter for AgTech and other innovations, distinguishing scientifically robust solutions from overhyped concepts that can be pionnered and implemented by African youth.
In an investment climate that demands strict validation, formal research roles are essential for identifying and de-risking the true big bets on people in agrifood systems.
This session will explore the evidence-based pathways needed to support the identification of such big bets for governments, investors, philanthropies and other decision-makers, and to ensure that these investments deliver measurable, system-wide impact particularly on youth.
The core premise is that research must now power immediate, high-impact continental “Big Bets” that can unlock transformative investment on youth to accelerate Africa’s agrifood systems transformation.
MSMEs and startups are central to the growth and transformation of Africa’s agri-food systems, yet many continue to face major barriers in accessing finance, business support, and investment opportunities.
This session will explore how stronger financial ecosystems can better support emerging enterprises through innovative financing mechanisms, supportive policies, ecosystem partnerships, and investment-ready business environments.
Discussions will focus on how financial institutions, investors, governments, and ecosystem actors can work together to unlock sustainable growth for agri-food entrepreneurs and startups across the continent.
The GoGettaz Agripreneur Prize Competition, led by the Generation Africa, is a leading platform celebrating young African innovators driving solutions across agrifood systems. Focused on innovation, sustainability, and impact, it recognizes and supports youth-led ventures with over $160,000 in prizes.
This live final pitch session will feature top agripreneurs from across the continent presenting their ventures to expert judges and a global audience. The session will culminate in the selection of Grand Prize and Impact Award winners, to be announced at the Presidential Youth Townhall ceremony.
Africa’s agricultural resilience, nutrition outcomes, and market competitiveness depend on diversifying production systems beyond a limited number of staple crops.
Shifting the agricultural narrative away from dependence on monocultures such as maize, wheat, and rice toward climate-resilient, high-nutrient alternative crops can help attract greater capital and investment into agrifood systems.
This session will explore investment opportunities in underutilized, climate-resilient, indigenous, and high-value crops that can strengthen food security, food and income diversification, biodiversity, and regional and international trade.
Discussions will examine financing needs on high value diversified crops, market development, research and innovation, value addition, and policies required to scale diversified agricultural systems across the continent.
Africa secures less than 3% of total global climate finance flows despite contributing less than 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions and containing 9 of the 10 world’s most climate-vulnerable nations.
To bridge this gap and shield vulnerable populations from climate volatility, international and regional actors are transitioning from isolated, short-term projects to structured, systemic financing mechanisms.
Africa’s climate resilience depends on nexus solutions that boost productivity, strengthen agrifood competitiveness, and improve rural livelihoods–not only environmental gains.
This session explores how integrated agriculture, energy, and climate investments, such as renewable-powered irrigation, processing, and cooling, can keep people at the center of climate action and finance.
The discussion will examine why many mechanisms to build skills and capabilities on adaptation, mitigation, and regreening efforts fall short, highlighting integration, prioritizing policies, and short- and long-term investments towards building for resilient, inclusive, and economically vibrant rural economies across the continent.
In the context of the International Year of Women Farmers, this dialogue recognizes the indispensable role that women and smallholder farmers play as the backbone of Africa’s agri-food systems, while also acknowledging that they remain among the most vulnerable actors in agricultural value chains.
Investing in the human capital of African agrifood value chains is one of the most effective ways to unlock the continent’s projected 1 trillion dollar agribusiness market by 2030.
Upstream and midstream labour–farmers, aggregators, processors, and logistics providers–accounts for a substantial share of employment in Sub-Saharan Africa, and directing capital toward this workforce, particularly youth and women, can rapidly boost productivity, reduce losses, and strengthen climate resilience.
The Farmers’ Roundtable Dialogue will explore how farmers can collectively build resilience beyond aid dependency while advancing the CAADP agenda and post-Malabo commitments for inclusive and sustainable African food systems.
The discussion will highlight practical opportunities to invest in and strengthen human capital along food systems value chains, in order to accelerate CAADP implementation and turn investments into tangible, scalable impacts on the ground.
Leveraging Climate and Nature Finance for Food Systems Transformation in Africa
This special closed roundtable will bring together the officials and market actors who rarely meet in one room but whose decisions must now converge: ministers of finance or their representatives, ministers of agriculture, ministers of environment, senior technical experts, implementing agencies, climate and environment funds, development partners, development finance institutions and private sector actors.
The session will focus on practical models that are already demonstrating synergies between finance, food systems and environmental outcomes, and on how African countries can use AFSF 2026 as a platform to position strong, green-fund-ready investment pathways that attract diverse sources of finance and deliver results for people, nature and economies.
Youth Food Systems Leadership is the single most critical lever for transforming African agriculture from a sector of necessity into a high-tech, highly profitable engine of economic growth. Africa’s agrifood systems are central to its economic future and its predominantly young population, yet face persistent challenges, including climate pressures, and limited market access.
While youth make up over 60% of the population and play a vital role in the sector, their participation and leadership are constrained by barriers to finance, skills development, and decision-making. However, the average age of an African farmer is 60 years old. Limited investment in leadership capacity and weak networks further hinder progress.
This session builds on the strategic vision that young people not merely as beneficiaries of agricultural development, but as entrepreneurs, innovators, investors, and leaders driving the transformation of Africa’s agrifood systems. The session will explore scalable solutions to strengthen youth leadership.
To bridge this generational gap, modern climate and agribusiness capital is shifting toward programs that position young professionals not just as laborers, but as executives, amplify their voice, and accelerate their inclusion, tech innovators, and policy leaders who can modernize food systems.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping how agricultural knowledge, advisory services, market intelligence, and climate information are delivered across food systems.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in African agriculture is creating a leapfrog opportunity, enabling the continent to bypass costly and often missing physical infrastructure, such as dense networks of weather stations and soil laboratories, through advanced software models and data-driven tools.
Realising this potential requires a broad coalition of farmers, governments, technology companies, research institutions, financial partners, telecom operators, and agribusinesses working together to turn data into productivity, resilience, profitability, and food security at scale across Africa.
This session will explore how AI-powered solutions investments needed to support more productive, efficient, and resilient agriculture at scale while addressing barriers related to infrastructure, affordability, digital inclusion, language accessibility, and farmer adoption.
Discussions will focus on investments financing mechanisms for practical applications, enabling ecosystems, investment needs, and partnerships required to accelerate responsible AI deployment across African agri-food systems.
As African countries advance the implementation and domestication of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), delivery will require a stronger alignment between political commitments, national priorities, and investment flows.
Though there has been progress across agriculture, infrastructure, climate resilience, youth employment, trade, and value addition, financing often remains fragmented and incoherent with continental and development objectives.
Effective implementation is essential and achieving CAADP goals requires mobilizing strategic investments and financing instruments while strengthening leadership and accountability.
This session will explore how governments, investors, development partners, and regional institutions can jointly deploy blended finance to fast-track CAADP priorities and transform Africa’s food systems beyond the 10% national budget allocation outlined in the previous CAADP.
Parliaments play a pivotal role in mobilizing domestic finance for agri-food systems by shaping policy, approving budgets, strengthening oversight, and creating the conditions for public and private investment to drive Africa's agricultural transformation.
The transition from the Malabo Declaration cycle into the next decade of the post-Malabo CAADP (Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme) framework requires a radical governance pivot.
While heads of state sign international agreements and ministries draft national agricultural investment plans, the key role to fund these commitments rests squarely with African parliaments.
Convened by the African Food Systems Parliamentary Network (AFSPaN), this high-level roundtable brings together Speakers of Parliaments, Chairs of Committees on Agriculture, Finance, and Budget, and regional legislative bodies (such as the Pan-African Parliament and ECOWAS/EAC Parliaments).
Parliamentarians will deliberate on how to aggressively expand domestic fiscal space for food systems, ring-fence agricultural budgets from executive reallocation, eliminate trade-stifling non-tariff barriers through legislative harmonization, and enforce strict institutional accountability to ensure every allocated dollar delivers measurable, climate-resilient field results.
Women-led SMEs are critical contributors to Africa’s agri-food economy but continue to face disproportionate challenges in accessing finance, investment networks, and growth opportunities.
This session will explore practical solutions to improve access to capital for women entrepreneurs, including gender-responsive financing, blended finance models, guarantee mechanisms, and investment partnerships.
Participants will discuss how financial institutions, investors, and policymakers can better support women-led businesses and create more inclusive investment ecosystems.
Anchored in the CAADP Strategy and Action Plan 2026–2035, this session explores how targeted investments are driving inclusive agrifood systems transformation across Africa. Focusing on empowering youth and women in agriculture, this session will highlight scalable models such as YEFFA and its impact in expanding access to finance, skills, markets, and innovation.
Drawing on experiences from Impact Partner Organizations, the session will share practical lessons and proven investment approaches, showcase impact, and examine how partnerships can overcome systemic barriers, strengthen youth and women’s participation and accelerate decent job creation, resilience, and sustainable growth in agrifood systems.
The global energy crisis has transformed energy from a predictable operating expense into the primary bottleneck for food security. By directly choking off one-third of the global fertilizer trade alongside 20% of global oil and LNG volumes, the conflict has reshaped the economics of agrifood survival.
Reliable and affordable energy is essential for transforming Africa’s agri-food systems, from irrigation and cold chains to processing, logistics, and digital services.
As global energy markets face increasing volatility, this session will explore how African countries can strengthen energy resilience across agricultural value chains through renewable energy, including nuclear, renewable, geothermal, hydro, wind energy decentralized systems, innovative technologies, and strategic investment partnerships.
Discussions will examine how energy access can support competitiveness, reduce losses, strengthen rural livelihoods, and accelerate food systems transformation.
This networking cocktail event will provide an informal platform for young leaders, agripreneurs, innovators, investors, policymakers, and partners to connect, share ideas, and build relationships within Africa’s food systems. Designed to promote peer learning and collaboration, this session will allow youth to engage with various ecosystem actors.
Participants will have the opportunity to showcase their aspirations and identify potential partnerships, mentorships, and investments that can accelerate youth-led solutions for more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable food systems.
VALUE4HER is a continental AGRA initiative that empowers and strengthens women’s agribusiness enterprises while amplifying their voice and advocacy across Africa.
Under this initiative, AGRA launched the Women Agripreneurs of the Year Awards (WAYA) in 2021 to recognize women who demonstrate outstanding innovation, leadership and impact in agriculture and agribusiness, significantly contributing to food security in their communities and countries.
The awards are presented at the Africa Food Systems Forum, leveraging its influential platform and diverse gathering of stakeholders to showcase and celebrate women agripreneurs on a continental stage.
The 2026 WAYA Awards coincide with AGRA’s twentieth anniversary and the United Nations’ International Year of the Woman Farmer, a rare convergence that sharpens the focus on who truly feeds Africa and who receives investment.
Over the past five years, WAYA has helped answer this question by surfacing high-growth women agripreneurs whose enterprises are already delivering the nourishment, jobs and resilience needed for the next phase of African food systems transformation.
Partner-hosted side events run in parallel throughout the day – see the Side Events tab above for the full listing.
The inaugural Africa Food Festival (AFF) co-hosted by African Food Fellowship, AFSF, and the City of Kigali, will take place alongside the 2026 AFSF Summit. As a flagship public event, it will feature a Culinary Village, bringing the Summit to life through African food, culture, music, crafts, and food business and investment.
The main objectives are: a) Celebrate Africa's diverse culinary heritage and culture, b) Showcase live cooking, competitions, and culinary dialogues c) Promote African cuisine as a driver of investment, tourism, and economic growth d) Connect food with agriculture, nutrition, and agri-food value chains through a vibrant street food experience e) Promote Made in Africa food products and local consumption f) Provide a platform for African chefs, youth entrepreneurs, and innovators g) Foster partnerships, investment, and food business opportunities h) Celebrate African music and culture to enhance the Festival experience and AFSF's visibility.
The Opening Ceremony of the Africa Food Systems Forum officially launches the event, bringing together Africa’s most influential business leaders, policymakers, investors, and development partners.
The session sets the strategic tone for the 2026 Forum by highlighting the continent’s food and nutrition security priorities, key investment opportunities, and the vital role of collaboration between public, private, philanthropic, and producer actors in driving sustainable growth.
Marking 20 years of policy and business dialogue, the opening will also reflect on the Forum’s legacy and evolution.
Through keynote addresses from distinguished leaders and special guests, the ceremony will present a forward-looking vision for Africa’s agrifood systems transformation, food security, energy transition, job creation, and resilience-building agenda, while inspiring participants to forge partnerships that accelerate the continent’s development.
Countries that transformed did not rely on scattered projects; they built disciplined systems linking smallholder productivity, manufacturing capability, export competitiveness and finance that served productive investment.
These insights can help African leaders ask the hard question: what would it take for African food systems to become the foundation of industrialisation, jobs, sovereignty and regional trade by 2046? That questions need to be answered now.
The framing Segment: The next twenty years- Africa @2046
Joe Studwell, author of How Asia works and How Africa works
Donald Kaberuka, AU reform Agenda
President of Gates Foundation
AU Commissioner for Agriculture
High level: Facts and Evidence Segment
Alice Ruhweza – President of AGRA
Maximo Torerro, Chief Economist, FAO
Ache LEKE, Partner, McKinsey
Wamkele Mene, CEO, AfCFTA
AfDB President
WB -Africa Regional Head
CEO of MasterCard Foundation
Rajiv Shah – President of the Rockefeller Foundation
Roundtable: Stakeholder voices
Ministers and heads Regional Economic (Agriculture, Livestock, Environment, Trade, Energy)
Expert scientists
Private sector leaders investing in Agri Food Systems
Policy experts and parliamentary leadership
Farmer Organization leaders
Civil society leaders
Triangular Cooperation is becoming an increasingly important driver of agricultural investment, innovation, and knowledge exchange across developing economies. This session will explore how African countries and partners globally can strengthen collaboration to mobilize investment, scale technologies, and accelerate food systems transformation.
Discussions will highlight successful cooperation models, investment partnerships, technology transfer, and opportunities to strengthen trade and agricultural development through triangular cooperation.
Young people living with disabilities and those affected by conflict remain among the most underserved groups in agrifood systems despite their significant contributions as farmers, entrepreneurs, innovators and leaders.
This integrated session explores how agrifood systems can become more inclusive, resilient and responsive to young people facing multiple and intersecting barriers.
The session will focus on lived experiences while engaging various ecosystem actors, including government representatives, private sector stakeholders, development partners, organizations working with persons with disabilities and humanitarian stakeholders.
Through lived experiences, youth-led testimonies and dialogue with governments, development partners, private sector actors, organizations of persons with disabilities and humanitarian stakeholders, participants will examine practical solutions that strengthen resilience, expand economic opportunities, promote social inclusion and support recovery and peacebuilding.
The session will identify concrete actions, partnerships, investments, policy reforms and systemic changes needed to ensure all young people can access opportunities and shape agrifood systems transformation.
Africa does not lack agricultural innovation. What it lacks is a reliable pathway to scale.
Too often, proven agricultural solutions remain trapped in fragmented pilots–reaching only a small fraction of the farmers who could benefit.
At the same time, governments are under increasing pressure to ensure agricultural investments deliver measurable results: stronger livelihoods, greater resilience to weather shocks, improved productivity, and better returns on public spending.
This plenary will spotlight how AIM for Scale and C4Impact Advisory Group are working with governments, multilateral development banks, academia, and technical partners to help move evidence-backed agricultural innovations from pilot projects into national systems capable of reaching millions of farmers.
Focusing on the experiences of Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, and Senegal, the session will explore how each country is working to integrate AI-powered weather forecasting and digital advisory services into government systems to strengthen farmer decision-making and resilience.
Speakers will examine the partnerships, financing, institutional coordination, and technical advances required to operationalize innovation at scale–including the role of artificial intelligence, national meteorological services, extension systems, and MDB-supported investment programs.
The discussion will demonstrate how AIM for Scale’s model–coordinating evidence, technical expertise, government leadership, and financing partnerships–can help countries translate promising innovations into scalable public systems that deliver meaningful impact for farmers.
Expect a forward-looking and implementation-focused conversation centered on one critical question: How do we ensure proven agricultural innovations actually reach farmers at the scale required to meaningfully improve livelihoods?
This plenary session will explore how reaching equality is at the advantage of all food system actors, and that achieving it must come through transformational actions addressing harmful gender norms, fostering inclusive decision-making and enabling equitable access to resources.
Aligned with the UN International Year of Women Farmers, women farmers’ experiences will be highlighted and used as examples of successes and gaps.
Panelists will discuss how policy and financial changes can reduce power imbalances, enable better access to resources, ensure decent and safe employment, and address the unpaid care work issues that hinder food system’s transformation and growth.
The 2026 Africa Food Systems Forum marks two decades of driving agricultural transformation, yet today’s geopolitical landscape presents unprecedented, compounded shocks.
Ongoing global conflicts, the climate crisis, and energy market disruptions are reshaping agricultural production, trade, input costs, and food security, exposing the deep vulnerabilities of Africa’s agri-food systems.
These conflicts have disrupted international fertilizer and grain supply chains, while a volatile global energy market has sharply increased the costs of domestic production, processing, and distribution. For many African countries, these external shocks are no longer short-term disruptions; they now represent structural threats to national security and food sovereignty.
This session will examine how governments, the private sector, and development partners can strengthen food systems resilience in an increasingly uncertain global environment.
This high-level, closed-door dialogue will bring together AU leadership; ministers of agriculture, energy and climate, and finance; investors; multilateral and bilateral development agencies; heads of international organizations; and leaders from the private sector and investment community.
Participants will explore strategies to diversify supply chains, accelerate renewable energy solutions for agriculture, enhance regional trade, and mobilize investments that reduce vulnerability to external shocks.
The session will focus on identifying practical actions to build more resilient, competitive, and sustainable food systems that can withstand future geopolitical and energy-related crises.
Leadership and Co-Chairing
The High-Level Ministerial Roundtable will be jointly led by:
H.E Hailemariam Dessalegn Boshe, Chair of the AGRA Board & Chair of the Africa Food Systems Forum – Co-Chair
Hon. Dr. Telesphore Ndabamenye, Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI), Republic of Rwanda – Co-Chair
This co-chairing arrangement reflects the partnership between continental leadership, AFSF institutional leadership, and host country ownership.
Expected Participants
Ministers of:
Agriculture
Finance
Health
Livestock
Environment
Trade
Energy
Heads of Regional Economic Communities (RECs)
African Union Commission / African Union Development Agency – New Partnership for African Development (AUDA-NEPAD)
Development partners and financial institutions (select participation)
Private sector and investment leaders (by invitation)
Livestock and aquatic food systems play a critical role in Africa’s food systems, contributing to economic growth, employment, nutrition, and trade. Across the continent, businesses, investors, governments, and development partners are developing innovative approaches to commercialization, market development, and investment mobilization.
Through a series of interactive investment conversations, this session will explore what is working, what attracts investment, and what is needed to scale successful models across Africa.
Investment Conversations:
Investment Conversation 1: Building Scalable Beef Finishing and Fattening Businesses
Mr. Aleem Iqbal – CEO, Tawir Africa
Mr. Richard Midikira – Associate Director, Innovation & Partnerships, Aceli Africa
Mr. Awab Elmesbah – Senior Manager, Gatsby Africa
Investment Conversation 2: Unlocking Growth in Aquaculture
Ms. Loycana Mwindunda – CEO, Konga Agribusiness Ltd.
Mr. Ben Gimson – Lead Africa, Aqua Spark
Ms. Lucy Kimami – Director-Aquaculture, Gatsby Africa
Investment Conversation 3: Innovative Livestock Business Models
Mr. M.D. Abubakar – Managing Director/CEO, L&Z Integrated Farms Nigeria Ltd.
Mr. Fred Benneh Frimpong – CEO, Farming in Africa
TBD - TBD
Dr. Koffi Zougbédé – Economist, Sahel and West Africa Club Secretariat, OECD
Synthesis Panel: Financing What Works at Scale
Mr. Deji Adebusoye – Vice President, Sahel Capital
Mr. Samuel Ngugi – Head of Business & Strategy, Farmer’s Choice
Dr. Tom Osebe – Senior Officer, Gates Foundation
Ms. Verena Ruzibuka – Country Director, Heifer International Rwanda
Based on the priorities outlined in the AU CAADP Strategy (2026–2035) and the Africa Youth Climate Action Plan, along with other youth position statements on ‘Climate, Youth, and Agriculture,’ this session will focus on how to consolidate and scale African youth-led climate action within agrifood systems.
Across Africa, youth, especially young women, are leading innovations in climate-smart agriculture. However, they face challenges such as fragmented platforms, limited access to production resources and finance, and weak policy integration.
As Africa prepares for COP31 and COP32, there is an urgent need to align continental frameworks, youth movements, advocacy efforts, and investment pipelines to enhance impact.
This session will bring together organizations, policymakers, philanthropic leaders, financiers, and youth leaders to explore how strengthened youth involvement will shape future agrifood system.
We will highlight evidence from regional strategies and youth coalitions that demonstrate the importance of interconnected actions, such as strengthening young Africans’ movements on climate, improving access to climate finance, and incorporating youth leadership into decision-making processes.
The discussion will culminate in actionable pathways to unify youth engagement mechanisms, mobilize investments, and amplify the voices of African youth in global climate negotiations.
National climate funds and innovative investment mechanisms are becoming increasingly important tools for financing climate action and accelerating resilient agri-food systems across Africa.
This session will explore how governments, development partners, financial institutions, the private sector, and philanthropic partners can strengthen national climate finance architecture to mobilize and channel greater investment into adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable agricultural development.
Discussions will examine financing instruments, governance models, and partnership approaches that improve access to climate finance for farmers, businesses, local communities, and young innovators and entrepreneurs, while strengthening inclusive, climate-resilient growth across Africa.
Segment 1: Bright lights
Mr. Kaleab Tadesse Bekele, Country Director – Ethiopia, JDC
Gogettaz
Segment 2: Panel
Dr. James Mwangi, Group Managing Director and CEO, Equity Bank Group
Prof. Jean Chrysostome Ngabitsinze, Group Director General and UN Assistant Secretary General, African Risk Capacity Group
Ms. Teddy Mpinganzima Mugabo, CEO, Rwanda Green Fund
Mr. Olympus Manthata, Head – Climate Finance, Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA)
Mr. Yonas Getahun, Director, Climate Resilient Green Economy Facility (CRGE)
Dr. Apollinaire D. Gnanvi, Director General, National Fund for Environment and Climate (FNEC)
Mr. Mikko Ollikainen, Head, Adaptation Fund
Ms. Tariye Gbadegesin, Chief Executive Officer,Climate Investment Funds (CIF)
Ms. Andrea Hauser, Member of the Management Committee, Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) Development Bank
Mr. Christophe Lecourtier, Chief Executive Officer, Agence Française de Développement Group (AFD Group)
Mr. Chris Chijiutomi, Managing Director and Head of Africa, British International Investment (BII)
Mr. Hajime Iwama, Director General of African Department, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)
Mr. Michael Kwame Nkonu, Head of Agricultural Livelihoods, IKEA Foundation
Dr. Haileselassie Medhin, Regional Director for Africa & Global Lead for Energy, IKEA Foundation
Dr. Peter Umunay, Thematic Lead – Food Systems and Land Use, GEF
Dr. Andrea Porro, Secretary General, World Farmers' Organisation
Mr. Nat Robinson, Co-founder and COO, Terraton
Ms. Teddy Mpinganzima Mugabo, CEO, Rwanda Green Fund
Dr. Abdulmajid M. Nsekela, Group CEO & Managing Director, CRDB Bank Plc
Mr. Youssoupha Ndiaye, Primary Sector Division / Blended finance & Climate finance / Project management, La Banque Agricole
Ms. Fatma Khemesse Fall Dièye, General Director, La Banque Agricole
Ms. Mafalda Duarte, Executive Director, Green Climate Fund
Mr. Pierre-Yves Guedez, Lead – Climate and Environmental Funds, IFAD
Ms. Catherine Koffman, Regional Director Africa, Green Climate Fund
Mr. Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Mr. Ibrahima Cheikh Diong, Executive Director, Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD)
Dr. Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, Chair of the African Group of Negotiators and Director, Climate Vulnerability and Adaptation, Climate Change Department, Environmental Protection Agency of Ghana
Dr. Barbara Buchner, CEO, Climate Policy Initiative
Healthy soils are the foundation of productive agriculture, resilient food systems, and sustainable economic growth, yet more than 65% of Africa’s productive land is degraded, with erosion the most widespread form of land degradation. Widespread soil degradation demands greater investment in sustainable land management and soil restoration.
This high-level plenary will convene policymakers, investors, research institutions, development partners, farmers' organizations, and the private sector to explore innovative financing, technologies, and policies that promote soil health.
The discussion will confront the collapse of Overseas Development Assistance and rising costs of fertilizer imports linked to geopolitical shocks. Industry leaders will emphasize agroecology and regenerative agriculture while sharing progress on the Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Action Plan and Soil Initiative for Africa.
The 2025 AFSF in Dakar hosted the first-ever Livestock Ministerial Deep Dive, bringing together ministers from nine African countries. The discussion confirmed both the importance of livestock in Africa’s development agenda and the demand for a dedicated ministerial platform. Ministers called for the conversation to continue and to move from dialogue to action.
The 2026 session is an opportunity to deliver on that request.
It is also a moment to position livestock as central to the continent’s food systems, jobs, and trade agenda – a sector that supports more than 70 per cent of Africa’s rural livelihoods and whose transformation is essential to the goals of CAADP, the AfCFTA, and the broader food systems transformation that AFSF champions.
Beyond its contribution to livelihoods, livestock is critical to building competitive, resilient, and market-oriented food systems across the continent.
Mobilizing greater investment is essential to unlocking the potential of Africa's agri-food systems. Financial centres can play a catalytic role by connecting capital with bankable agricultural opportunities, fostering innovative financing solutions, and creating an enabling environment for domestic and international investors.
Financial centers also play a critical role in mobilizing capital, structuring financial products, and connecting investment opportunities with regional and international markets.
This session will explore how African financial centers can strengthen their role in attracting investment into agri-food systems through enabling policies, innovative financing solutions, and stronger investment ecosystems.
Discussions will focus on competitiveness, investor confidence, regulatory frameworks, and opportunities to position Africa as a leading destination for sustainable agri-food investment.
Africa's CAADP Strategy and Action Plan aims to develop resilient and sustainable agrifood systems that can increase agrifood output by 45% by 2035, enhance food and nutrition security, promote inclusive livelihoods, and empower women and youth.
In this context, sports provide a powerful platform to engage young people in discussions and actions related to healthy diets, food systems, entrepreneurship, and community wellbeing.
The Basketball Africa League (BAL) continues to leverage basketball as a social connector through initiatives such as BAL4HER, BAL Future Pros, BAL Advance, and BAL Community. These programs focus on youth development, gender equality, employability, nutrition, financial literacy, and community impact.
This special session hosted by the BAL will explore how the growing BAL ecosystem–and the wider sports sector–can act as a catalyst for Africa’s agrifood transformation. Around the world, successful sports franchises often help stimulate economic activity beyond the court, supporting a network of local suppliers, service providers and entrepreneurs.
Over time, BAL franchises could contribute to similar ecosystems, where businesses ranging from agrifood companies and caterers to logistics providers and hospitality operators participate in the commercial activity generated around clubs, games and fan activations.
Transforming Africa’s agri-food systems will require a new generation of leaders capable of navigating complex challenges across investment, climate, governance, technology, trade, and food security and global market volatility. Building the capacity of current and emerging leaders is therefore critical to accelerating sustainable and inclusive transformation.
This session will explore how leadership development, institutional capacity building, mentorship, and strategic partnerships can strengthen Africa’s ability to drive food systems transformation at scale.
Discussions will focus on the role of political, private sector, youth, and community leadership in creating enabling environments for innovation, investment, and long-term resilience.
This session forms part of a multi-country Scaling Agricultural Finance Dialogue Series bringing together senior stakeholders to align on a practical roadmap to double sustainable agricultural lending within five years. The series will deliver:
A Partnership Platform for Action to align on concrete strategies and commit to action
An Action Paper & CRO Roadmap, with measurable commitments reviewed annually at the Africa Food Systems Forum to ensure accountability and progress.
This informal networking event will celebrate the richness and diversity of African culture, creating a welcoming environment for delegates to connect through conversation, creativity, and shared heritage.
Focusing on Indigenous peoples and youth, the event will highlight the importance of culture, identity, and intergenerational knowledge in shaping inclusive and resilient food systems across Africa.
Delegates are encouraged to wear and showcase African attire and cultural expressions while engaging with youth, Indigenous representatives, agripreneurs, partners, and stakeholders. The relaxed atmosphere will be designed to foster relationship-building, idea exchange and collaboration.
Partner-hosted side events run in parallel throughout the day – see the Side Events tab above for the full listing.
This Deal Room session will bring together investors, financial institutions, development partners, policymakers, private sector leaders, and innovators to explore how collaborative de-risking approaches can accelerate agribusiness innovation and strengthen Africa’s food systems transformation agenda.
The session will examine how designing investment-ready ecosystems, building scalable financing vehicles and more de-risked agricultural ecosystem can create stronger conditions for blended finance participation, partnership and long-term investment in Africa’s food systems.
The inaugural Africa Food Festival (AFF) co-hosted by African Food Fellowship, AFSF, and the City of Kigali, will take place alongside the 2026 AFSF Summit. As a flagship public event, it will feature a Culinary Village, bringing the Summit to life through African food, culture, music, crafts, and food business and investment.
The main objectives are: a) Celebrate Africa's diverse culinary heritage and culture, b) Showcase live cooking, competitions, and culinary dialogues c) Promote African cuisine as a driver of investment, tourism, and economic growth d) Connect food with agriculture, nutrition, and agri-food value chains through a vibrant street food experience e) Promote Made in Africa food products and local consumption f) Provide a platform for African chefs, youth entrepreneurs, and innovators g) Foster partnerships, investment, and food business opportunities h) Celebrate African music and culture to enhance the Festival experience and AFSF's visibility.
Food corridors are increasingly central to Africa’s food security and trade agenda. They offer a practical pathway to connect production zones to deficit markets, strengthen regional trade and unlock regional and global market opportunities.
For example, the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor is projected to generate over US$16 billion in annual trade and benefit more than 500 million people across West Africa. Priority value chains such as rice in West Africa and horticulture in East Africa highlight both the urgency and scale of the opportunity.
Building infrastructure, facilitating trade, and strengthening value addition will position the continent as a competitive producer and exporter of key agricultural commodities, while strengthening intra-African trade under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
Strategic investments in transport, logistics, storage, and processing can reduce post-harvest losses, lower transaction costs, and expand access to regional and global markets.
This plenary will bring together senior leaders from government, regional institutions, private sector and development partners to discuss how stronger leadership, strategic partnerships and coordinated investment can accelerate Africa’s food corridors and move from ambition to delivery.
Africa’s agriculture and food systems value chains hold immense potential to drive economic growth, create jobs, strengthen food security, and build resilience across the continent when small, medium and large businesses are connected.
The Value Chain Roundtable Dialogue on Linking Small to Large Businesses will provide a strategic platform for exploring how targeted investments, innovative financing models, and enabling partnerships can strengthen derisking across food systems value chains, market integration, improve inclusivity, and scale agribusiness competitiveness.
Building on the importance of value chain approaches for improving agricultural productivity and performance, the dialogue will bring together stakeholders from the private sector, public It brings together actors that connect farmers, SMEs, and large corporations across production, processing, finance, and markets sector, finance, and development community to identify practical pathways for scaling inclusive growth.
Africa’s agrifood systems are a major source of employment, especially for youth, yet most roles remain low-productivity and informal. As the sector shifts toward value-added, branded, and traceable products, new opportunities are emerging beyond primary production.
This session will explore how strengthening value addition, expanding access to finance, and fostering innovation can enable youth-led enterprises across value chains. Bringing together young agripreneurs and key ecosystem actors, it will highlight practical pathways to create jobs, reduce post-harvest losses, and drive inclusive, resilient growth.
The private sector has a critical role to play in accelerating Africa’s food systems transformation, yet investment in agri-food systems often remains constrained by risk perceptions, fragmented markets, limited infrastructure, and financing gaps.
This session will explore how private sector engagement and investment models can be reimagined to unlock greater impact, scalability, and inclusiveness across food systems value chains.
Discussions will examine innovative financing structures, investment incentives, partnerships, and enabling environments needed to mobilize sustainable private capital into African agriculture and food systems.
This session convenes Former heads of states, retired head of institutions, Africa’s elder statesmen – the Council of the Wise – for a high‑level dialogue on leadership and resilience in agri‑food systems.
Positioned under the Africa Food Systems Forum 2026 theme Investing in Africa’s Agri‑Food Systems: Growing Jobs, Nourishing Nations, Building Resilience, this dialogue draw on the experience of these leaders in attracting investments on big ideas.
three ag leaders will pose sharp, future‑focused questions to the council, sparking candid exchanges that draw on decades of governance experience. The discussion highlights how leadership investments, grounded in wisdom and accountability, can strengthen institutions, mobilize financing, and drive innovation.
As AGRA marks 20 years, the Council’s insights provide a compass for Africa’s food future.
Civil society organizations (CSOs) play a critical role in ensuring that investments in agriculture are inclusive, accountable, and responsive to the needs of communities.
This roundtable will bring together CSO leaders, community organizations, development partners, investors, and policymakers to explore how grassroots leadership can strengthen the investment ecosystem, foster community ownership, and improve the impact of public and private capital.
Traditional Western Official Development Assistance (ODA) has entered a historic decline–marked by a record-breaking contraction of over 23% in 2025, with deep cuts to bilateral grants, social sector spending, and core UN contributions persisting through 2026.
For African agri-food systems, this aggressive withdrawal of foreign aid threatens to widen execution gaps, leaving the smallholders, women, and youth who form the continent's agricultural backbone acutely vulnerable to accelerating climate and market shocks.
This roundtable dialogue serves as an urgent strategic platform to pivot away from aid dependency and toward self-sustaining, innovative financial models. The session will explore how localized, community-led governance can actively de-risk agricultural investments, turning informal grassroots networks into highly organized, transparent pipelines for alternative capital.
Leadership is essential to building confidence, enabling reform, and creating the conditions needed to attract long-term investment into Africa’s agri-food systems.
This session brings together government leaders, investors, business executives, development finance institutions, and civil society to explore how leadership at every level can create the enabling environment needed to attract and scale investment across agri-food value chains.
Discussions will focus on strategic vision, governance, coordination, and the role of leadership in creating investable environments that support resilience, jobs, and sustainable economic growth.
Agrifood systems have the potential to become an engine of job creation, particularly in Africa, where demand for food, investment, and employment is rising rapidly. This session will take stock of AgriConnect’s first year, exploring lessons from early implementation and what it will take to scale the initiative toward its ambition of reaching 300 million farmers.
The discussion will focus on practical lessons from AgriConnect’s first mover countries, focusing on those reforms, partnerships and approaches that have been most successful in unlocking investments that can create jobs in the agrifood sector across the continent.
Co-hosted by the World Bank Group and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), speakers will also include Ministers from AgriConnect countries, as well as representation from the African Development Bank, private sector, farmers’ organizations, investors, think tanks, and farmers themselves.
The Youth Townhall is a bold, interactive session where young African leaders and innovators directly engage H.E. Paul Kagame – President of the Republic of Rwanda with tough, solution‑oriented questions. Under the theme Investing in Leadership, the townhall flips the script by positioning youth as challengers and co‑architects of Africa’s agricultural future.
This dynamic exchange highlights how leadership investments must empower youth to drive innovation, create jobs, and build resilient food systems, while holding leaders accountable to deliver on promises.
The Presidential Summit session at AFSF 2026 brings together Africa’s heads of state, ministers, and partners to advance The Kampala CAADP Declaration. The CAADP provide a roadmap for transforming agri-food systems, but their success depends on mobilizing coordinated public, private, and development finance aligned with national priorities.
Anchored in the Forum’s theme Investing in Africa’s Agri‑Food Systems: Growing Jobs, Nourishing Nations, Building Resilience, the session highlights leadership as the foundation of resilience.
The discussion will focus on aligning capital with country priorities, leveraging blended finance, strengthening domestic resource mobilization, and creating investment-ready pipelines that attract long-term private investment. boosting agrifood output by 45%, and tripling intra‑Africa trade.
Closing reflections will emphasize how presidents can mobilize $100 billion in financing, strengthen accountability, and work collectively to deliver measurable outcomes for citizens.
H.E. Dr. Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, Former President, United Republic of Tanzania
Partner-hosted side events run in parallel throughout the day – see the Side Events tab above for the full listing.
The inaugural Africa Food Festival (AFF) co-hosted by African Food Fellowship, AFSF, and the City of Kigali, will take place alongside the 2026 AFSF Summit. As a flagship public event, it will feature a Culinary Village, bringing the Summit to life through African food, culture, music, crafts, and food business and investment.
The main objectives are: a) Celebrate Africa's diverse culinary heritage and culture, b) Showcase live cooking, competitions, and culinary dialogues c) Promote African cuisine as a driver of investment, tourism, and economic growth d) Connect food with agriculture, nutrition, and agri-food value chains through a vibrant street food experience e) Promote Made in Africa food products and local consumption f) Provide a platform for African chefs, youth entrepreneurs, and innovators g) Foster partnerships, investment, and food business opportunities h) Celebrate African music and culture to enhance the Festival experience and AFSF's visibility.
Artificial Intelligence is rapidly reshaping African agriculture, with generative AI offering personalized, real‑time advisory across crops, livestock, weather, and markets at a fraction of traditional extension costs.
Yet unlocking this potential for smallholder farmers requires financing to move beyond pilots and building shared data and digital public infrastructure that ensures accuracy, trust, and accountability.
This plenary will bring both challenges into a single dialogue, drawing on the work of the Institute for Agriculture and AI, launched through a partnership between the Gates Foundation and United Arab Emirates.
Discussions will explore coordinated investments and governance frameworks to deliver AI solutions that reflect African realities and serve farmers, women, youth, and agribusinesses.
As Official Development Assistance (ODA) declines, the private sector is no longer just a participant–it is the primary engine of Africa’s food system transformation.
This private sector roundtable brings together CEOs, Chief Risk Officers (CROs), and heads of agribusiness from Africa’s leading private commercial banks, alongside tier-1 agri-corporate leaders and fintech innovators. The dialogue moves past traditional, concessional development finance to address the hard economics of commercial lending.
The goal is to move commercial banks from passive observers to active drivers of continental agri-food transformation.
Africa is home to a wide range of continental, regional, financial, research, private sector, farmer, and development institutions that play critical roles in advancing agricultural transformation. While these institutions share many common objectives, greater coordination and structured collaboration could significantly enhance their collective impact.
This session will explore the vision for an African platform that brings together key institutions to strengthen strategic alignment, improve coordination around shared priorities, and foster more effective collaboration.
Discussions will focus on potential governance models, coordination mechanisms, and opportunities to build stronger institutional partnerships that can mobilize investment, facilitate knowledge exchange, and accelerate implementation of Africa's agri-food systems agenda.
Africa’s agrifood transformation depends on unlocking the potential of its youth. Young agri-entrepreneurs are reshaping value chains through innovation, value addition, and digital solutions that connect farmers to markets, finance, and knowledge.
However, barriers such as limited access to patient capital, weak ecosystems, fragmented markets, and policy gaps continue to constrain their growth.
This session will showcase successful youth-led enterprises and explore how targeted investments, enabling support systems, and strong partnerships can scale impact, driving job creation, improved incomes, and more resilient and inclusive agrifood systems.
Public-Private-Producer Partnerships (4P models) are emerging as an important mechanism for strengthening investment, inclusion, and coordination across agri-food value chains.
By connecting governments, private sector actors, producers, and development partners, 4P approaches can help reduce risk, improve market access, mobilize financing, and create more inclusive and resilient agricultural systems.
This session will explore successful 4P models, investment opportunities, governance approaches, and partnership structures that can support sustainable agri-value chain development across Africa.
This interactive Table session will bring together innovators, entrepreneurs, researchers, investors, and young leaders to explore how innovation can drive long-term and generational transformation across Africa’s food systems.
Discussions will focus on emerging technologies, ecosystem collaboration, talent development, scaling pathways, and the role of youth and innovation ecosystems in shaping the future of agriculture and food systems on the continent.
This thematic plenary explores how consumer demand for healthy and nutrient-dense foods shapes, and is shaped, by Africa’s food environments and informal and formal markets. High food prices, weak purchasing power, and climate-related disruptions continue to limit access to nutritious foods across the continent.
Discussions will examine how food environments influence trust, affordability, and desirability and how private sector strategies can be leveraged to generate demand and aspiration for healthy diets.
By linking demand and supply-side dynamics, the plenary demonstrates how targeted policies and public and private investment into nutrient-dense foods can accelerate healthy diets, unleash market growth, and create jobs for women and youth.
Modern, resilient infrastructure is fundamental to transforming Africa’s agri-food systems and unlocking private investment.
Strategic investments in transport corridors and logistics, irrigation, energy, storage, digital connectivity, and market infrastructure can significantly reduce post-harvest losses, improve market access, deepen regional trade, and enhance the competitiveness of agricultural value chains.
The Infrastructure Roundtable Dialogue will provide a strategic platform to accelerate targeted capital into these critical areas, ensuring that food moves efficiently from African farms to regional and global markets.
It will bring together investors, development finance institutions, sovereign wealth funds, commercial banks, infrastructure developers, policymakers, and agribusiness leaders who can mobilize, finance, build, and operate infrastructure that supports economic growth, regional integration, trade, energy access, digital transformation, and agri-food systems development across the continent.
This dedicated session, building on the "Backing Youth-Led Agro-businesses" morning session, serves as an open marketplace for young agripreneurs and food innovators to showcase their value-added products. It provides an opportunity for delegates to interact with these young entrepreneurs and offers a space for them to sell their products.
Innovation will be central to building resilient, competitive, and future-ready agri-food systems across Africa. This session will explore how investments in research, technology, innovation ecosystems, startups, incubators, and talent development can strengthen agricultural transformation and unlock new economic opportunities.
Discussions will focus on the systems and partnerships required to support innovation excellence, accelerate commercialization, connect innovators with capital, and scale practical solutions across African food systems.
The closing ceremony of the Africa Food Systems Forum 2026 will take place in the Food Festival arena, celebrating transformation in the heart of Africa’s food culture.
Anchored in the Forum’s theme, Investing in Africa’s Agri‑Food Systems: Growing Jobs, Nourishing Nations, Building Resilience, the ceremony will blend cultural performances, shared food experiences, and a brief communique summarizing the Forum’s outcomes.
This communique will highlight how governments, private sector, and civil society are advancing the Kampala CAADP Declaration, ensuring that commitments made during the Forum translate into real impact. The open‑air format symbolizes that food systems transformation belongs to the people, and ensures the Forum ends with energy, unity, and hope.
Festival Welcome – Food Systems in Action
Communique and Commitment Showcase – Highlights of the Forum
African countries are increasingly investing in evidence-based approaches to guide food systems transformation.
The Food Systems Country Countdowns - adapted from the global FSCI, led by GAIN, FAO, Johns Hopkins and Cornell - have emerged as a promising mechanism to strengthen accountability, improve cross-sector coordination, and support data-informed policymaking and investments.
By integrating indicators across nutrition, environment, livelihoods, governance and resilience, and aligning with frameworks such as CAADP and SDGs, they also contribute to more coherent food systems monitoring.
This side event will bring together governments, technical partners, researchers, and development organizations to reflect on country experiences and discuss how these can be scaled and leveraged to strengthen implementation and accountability for food systems transformation across Africa.
Africa cannot feed itself without water. With 90% of Sub-Saharan agriculture rainfed and irrigation covering under 5% of cultivated land, water security is a binding constraint on food systems transformation.
This session brings together ministers, investors, researchers and private sector leaders to build the case for scaling irrigation and water investment, covering regional programs, such as Africa RISE, as well as government, private sector and farmer insights with irrigation investment opportunities.
Speakers will share evidence, financing innovations and country experience from Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria and beyond, launch new knowledge products, and generate actionable messages for the AFS Forum Ministerial Dialogue.
This side event explores how investments and partnerships can strengthen the resilience of Africa’s Agrifood systems through China–Africa cooperation. Bringing together policymakers, researchers, development partners, youth leaders, and women representatives, the session will examine practical solutions to climate change, food insecurity, and market shocks.
Discussions will highlight experiences in agricultural technology transfer, climate-smart agriculture, capacity building, value chain development, and inclusive financing. The event will showcase innovative approaches that improve productivity, strengthen food security, create opportunities for youth and women, and enhance resilience.
The session aims to identify actionable pathways for mobilizing investment, fostering innovation, and building partnerships that support sustainable and resilient Agrifood systems across Africa.
Africa's agri-food systems depend on a critical workforce of agricultural extension workers, many of them women, who travel door-to-door connecting smallholder farmers to seeds, fertilizer, training, and markets. Most travel long distances on foot, limiting their reach and effectiveness.
World Bicycle Relief addresses this through a market-based model: a purpose-designed Buffalo Bicycle backed by a social enterprise enabling access to trained mechanics, spare parts, and repair services. Early field evidence suggests agents with bicycles reach more farmers, travel farther, and spend less on transport.
At 14.7x return on investment, the model drives inclusive economic growth; a two-year randomized controlled trial confirms women with bicycles achieve higher income, savings, food security, and dietary diversity. Co-hosted with agricultural extension organizations, this session makes the investment case for bicycle mobility as necessary infrastructure for Africa's food systems.
Africa’s aquatic food systems have an enormous potential to fuel local economies and create jobs for women and youth, while also strengthening resilience, nutrition and public health. This session will explore how investing in sustainable fisheries and aquaculture can accelerate sustainable transformation of Africa’s food systems.
Bringing together perspectives from nutrition, farming, research, policy and private sector, it will examine how aquatic food systems can create thriving value chains and resilient livelihoods, while promoting human and environment health.
Drawing on practical examples from across Africa, including women-led enterprises, rice-fish systems, school meal programs, climate-smart aquaculture and scalable business models, the session will explore what is needed to unlock investment, strengthen partnerships and scale successful approaches, while highlighting women’s contributions across aquatic food systems during the International Year of the Woman Farmer.
Remote rural communities, the extreme poor and displaced people, are neglected by investments that support the provision of productive use energy (PUE) for agriculture. Yet, this neglect can obscure a major opportunity: affordable, reliable energy access can develop climate resilient food systems and unlock real economic agency for marginalised women and youth.
This session takes a cross-sector, systems lens to the constraints blocking finance and its equitable use – with an eye firmly on solutions. Drawing on concrete examples from underserved communities, energy solution providers, and financial actors, it maps integrated pathways to outcomes that are both commercially bankable and transformative for those left behind.
Participants will leave seeing underserved communities not as a risk to be managed, but as an undervalued frontier for productive use energy investment – and understanding that cross-sector collaboration is what makes getting there achievable.
The next shock is already here. Africa's agrifood systems face mounting pressures from climate shocks, humanitarian crises, market disruptions, and geopolitical instability. These interconnected challenges threaten food security, nutrition, livelihoods, and economic growth, exposing deep structural vulnerabilities.
We explore how Africa can move toward a systems approach that delivers food security, better nutrition, inclusive economic opportunities, and long-term transformation.
Through evidence, field experiences, and partner perspectives, participants will examine how investments in innovation, market systems, local enterprises, and community capacity help countries respond to shocks while building resilience. Focusing on 3 questions: What is the crisis now? What actions are needed in the next 12 months? And how do we prevent future crises?
The session will identify practical pathways that connect response, recovery, and transformation, in climate-vulnerable, fragile contexts.
The aim is to promote the exchange of experiences and foster initiatives that advance Regenerative Tropical Agriculture. Most of the world's soil biodiversity is found in tropical regions.
Rather than destroying this living wealth through chemical and synthetic approaches associated with the simplification and monotony of crop and livestock systems, the objective is to make this abundance the foundation for increasing agricultural production while expanding the supply of healthy foods capable of addressing the alarming rise in the consumption of ultra-processed products and obesity, which in both Brazil and Africa are increasing alongside hunger.
The Africa Food Systems Forum (AFSF) provides a particularly important opportunity to strengthen the links between research and field-based experiences dedicated to the emergence of Regenerative Tropical Agriculture on both sides of the Atlantic.
Africa must produce and consume twice as many vegetables to achieve healthy diets. Despite their importance for nutrition, health, economic growth, and climate resilience, vegetables are becoming less affordable due to energy constraints, post-harvest losses, and value-chain barriers.
Power the Plate brings together leaders from business, innovation, government, finance, and development to explore how productive renewable energy can make vegetables more abundant, affordable, and appealing across Africa.
Through evidence, high-level reflections, and showcases of women-led innovations, participants will discover solutions improving irrigation, cooling, storage, logistics, market development, and consumer appeal. Interactive audience engagement will explore how to scale innovations, strengthen partnerships, and put more vegetables on more plates.
The session concludes with the launch of the Africa Vegetable Innovation Platform, a bold new partnership to advance #DoubleTheVeg across Africa
What do women-centered and inclusive food systems look like? This session will explore practical pathways for building food systems that pay attention to the priorities and needs of women and men in agrifood systems.
The discussions will spotlight women-centered approaches that strengthen leadership within farmers’ organizations, promote economic empowerment models tailored to rural contexts, and expand access to decent jobs and employment opportunities for young women.
The session will also highlight evidence-based insights and advance equitable policies that address the distinct needs of men and women across agricultural value chains.
Additionally, the session will explore strategies and inclusive climate adaptation and risk-management mechanisms, such as insurance schemes, financing models in place, policies, which help youth and women farmers better adapt to climate change and promote resilient food systems.”
AfricaVeg is a new public–private initiative led by the World Vegetable Center to strengthen Africa’s vegetable breeding and seed innovation ecosystem.
The session will explore how African seed companies, public breeding programs, universities, and regional partners can work together to accelerate the development and delivery of locally adapted, climate-resilient vegetable varieties that better serve farmers and markets across the continent.
Many vegetable farmers in Africa continue to rely on imported or poorly adapted seed, while local seed companies often lack access to advanced breeding tools, elite genetics, and product development partnerships.
AfricaVeg aims to bridge this gap by equipping African seed enterprises with the genetics, technical capacity, market intelligence, and collaborative breeding networks needed to become stronger innovation partners.
This event showcases scalable innovations in policy design and implementation tools that foster alignment across programmes and policies in support of the National Agrifood Systems Investment Plans under CAADP’s Kampala Declaration.
In addition to insights into the 'How-To' of a systems approach for policymakers; government representatives will share innovative tools that contribute to the alignment of policy objectives with private sector needs and increased investment in order to generate jobs for young people in agrifood systems that sustainably produce affordable and healthy food for all.
The panel brings together national policymakers, practitioners, and leading academics, with practical examples from Rwanda, South Sudan, Zambia, Ireland, and AUDA-NEPAD on aligning priorities, mobilizing investments, and strengthening governance to enable resilience and accelerate agrifood systems transformation.
Transforming Africa's agrifood systems in an increasingly uncertain global context demands smart and inclusive financing. Yet, public funds are stretched thin, private capital tends to underinvest in agriculture, while smallholders, pastoralists, SMEs, and women are too often left out of the financing equation.
Organized by AgriBridge, an African-German Policy Network for Sustainable Agrifood Systems, this session will explore key questions around agrifood systems financing. It will highlight innovative financing approaches, including blended finance and de-risking instruments such as trade credit guarantees for women entrepreneurs or a central livestock feed purchasing agency.
It will also provide a space for constructive, interactive dialogue on strengthening more self-reliant financing models while considering the catalytic role of official development assistance (ODA).
Africa is making significant investments in transforming its food systems, yet millions of people, particularly women and children, continue to experience poor diets and malnutrition.
This interactive side event brings together policymakers, researchers, development partners, private sector actors and community organizations to explore how food systems can better deliver healthy diets.
Drawing on evidence from CAADP implementation, food systems research, school feeding innovations and community-led action, participants will identify practical strategies to strengthen nutrition outcomes across policy, investment and implementation.
The session will generate recommendations for building food systems and ringfencing related nutrition investments that truly nourish Africa.
Healthy soils and resilient food systems cannot be achieved at scale without changing how public finance supports agriculture. The recent fertilizer price and supply shocks have further exposed the vulnerability of input-dependent production systems and the need to improve nutrient use efficiency and diversify nutrient resources.
Too little investment reaches the farmers and communities restoring ecosystems and building long-term resilience. By linking soil information to public agricultural spending, governments can target support where it is most needed.
This session explores how robust soil evidence, perspectives from the field, and repurposed public agricultural support can inform policy, finance, and practice while advancing inclusive outcomes for all.
Particular attention will be given to practical agronomic responses to Africa’s fertilizer crisis, including integrated soil fertility management, that strengthen resilience while reducing dependence on imported fertilizers.
The side event will share initiatives related to water harvesting and storage, sustainable food production, income generation, and strengthening local capacities, demonstrating how integrated actions can contribute to food security, productive inclusion, women's empowerment and climate adaptation.
Diverse voices from governments and civil society in the Global South (such as Brazil, Kenya and Burkina Faso) will share their experiences, in addition to the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub.
The session will be divided into 3 topics: (a) Access to Water & Food Security; (b) Pathways for Transforming Food Systems with Climate Action; (c) The Role of Local Communities in Building Resilience. The event will address the Cisterns Program, developed by the Brazilian government and civil society for over 20 years.
Today, it is a global benchmark in climate adaptation and promoting food security for vulnerable communities in semi-arid regions, developing low-cost, high-impact social technologies.
Africa’s adapted crops–including sorghum, millet, cowpea, cassava, teff, bambara groundnut, and indigenous vegetables–offer strong potential for climate resilience, better nutrition, and green jobs. Yet, weak seed systems, low productivity, fragmented markets, limited processing, and insufficient private investment continue to constrain their growth and commercialization.
This side event will convene governments, private sector actors, farmer organizations, youth enterprises, researchers, financiers, and development partners to explore how to unlock the full value of these crops from production to markets and value addition.
Discussions will focus on boosting productivity, expanding structured markets, strengthening processing and food innovation, and increasing investment across value chains. Participants will engage on partnerships, finance, market opportunities, and policy actions needed to scale inclusive, climate-resilient and job-creating food systems in Africa.
Coherent CAADP-Driven Food Systems Policies: Aligning National, Regional and Global Frameworks for Investment in Africa The session examines how aligning national, continental and global policy frameworks mobilize investment for food systems transformation.
It focuses on integrating National Food Systems Pathways and NASIPs with global frameworks like the UN Secretary General Call to Action, the UNFCCC and UNCBD to reduce regulatory complexity, increase investor predictability, reveal cross‑sector synergies, and produce bankable investment plans to de‑risk and scale public, private and blended finance.
Participants can expect a country‑focused panel demonstrating how alignment has been used to convert policy into investment‑ready actions, and an open discussion to identify solutions, barriers, de‑risking instruments and partner support needs.
The session will generate actionable recommendations to strengthen policy coherence and accelerate investment in food systems transformation.
Small-scale farmer productivity and profitability, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, remain stagnant despite substantial public investment. Many agricultural programs target a single constraint–such as access to inputs or information–but often fail to generate meaningful impacts.
Drawing on research from the Digital Agricultural Innovations and Services Initiative (DAISI), led by J-PAL and CEGA, this session explores evidence on bundling multiple agricultural services and why integrated approaches may outperform standalone interventions.
The session will highlight One Acre Fund’s bundled service model and feature perspectives from researchers, implementers, government, and farmers. Together, panelists will discuss how bundled programs can be designed for maximum impact and what it takes to scale them effectively.
Participants will leave with evidence-based insights on what works, what doesn’t, and the implications for program design and scale.
This high-level stakeholder consultation, organized in the lead-up to the 2026 UN Water Conference, will explore how AI-powered hydrology can transform water management, climate resilience, and agricultural productivity across Africa.
Using the Limpopo River Basin–spanning Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe–as a case study, the session will showcase the development of the world's first AI-enabled hydrology system for transboundary water management.
Participants will hear from governments, international organizations, academia, and technology partners on advances in AI hydrological modelling, digital twins, and regional cooperation.
Through an interactive discussion, the event will identify opportunities, challenges, and partnerships needed to scale AI-driven water solutions that improve decision-making for water managers and strengthen resilience for millions of farmers across the continent.
The International Year of the Woman Farmer 2026 event in Rwanda will celebrate the vital role of women farmers in food security, climate resilience, environmental restoration, and sustainable agriculture. Organized by FAO and UNDP, the session will highlight how women are driving climate-smart farming, natural resource stewardship, and rural economic development.
Participants will hear from government and UN leaders, women farmers, and experts through keynote remarks, testimonies, and an interactive panel. The event will also feature a documentary and exhibition showcasing women-led enterprises.
Discussions will address barriers to land, finance, technology, and markets while highlighting solutions, partnerships, and investments that advance women’s empowerment and leadership in agrifood systems.
This session explores how WFP and its partnerships with DFIs, IFIs, and impact investors are driving a shift from aid to investment by mobilising private capital into food systems across frontier and fragile contexts.
It will highlight WFP’s collaboration with the African Development Bank in Sudan and Nigeria, alongside joint research with IFPRI and AfDB, including RIAPA insights on the “pull effect” of midstream value chains. The session will showcase blended finance solutions such as World Food Invest to scale SMEs and strengthen value chains.
With a USD 75+ billion annual financing gap, WFP is leveraging its supply chain, procurement, and market expertise to catalyse private investment and build resilient, inclusive food systems.
Climate-adaptive water economies offer significant opportunities to create jobs, stimulate local enterprise dev., and strengthen economic resilience across Africa. Yet investments in water infrastructure, climate adaptation, skills dev., entrepreneurship, and MSME growth are often planned and financed separately, limiting their potential to generate sustainable employment.
This session will explore how governments, investors, dev. partners, and the private sector can better align public investment, private capital, climate finance, and workforce dev. to unlock the job creation potential of water-related systems.
Drawing on evidence and practice, participants will examine how linking water investments with skills, entrepreneurship, service economies, and market dev. can create economic opportunities while contributing to resilient and inclusive food systems. The discussion will highlight financing and partnership approaches needed to scale climate-adaptive water economies across Africa.
The side event “From Malabo to Kampala: Inclusive Governance and Accountability for Investment, Jobs and Resilience in African Agri-Food Systems” will examine how countries can turn CAADP Kampala commitments into practical delivery systems.
It will bring together government, parliament, youth, civil society, research, private sector and development partner voices to identify how inclusive governance and accountability can unlock investment, improve nutrition outcomes, support jobs for young people and women, and build resilience.
The discussion will focus on concrete mechanisms, including NASIP alignment, Joint Sector Reviews, Biennial Review readiness, public expenditure tracking, non-state actor evidence, citizen accountability and country-to-country learning.
Livestock is central to West African economies, yet receives less than 1% of global climate finance. This side event will discuss how to close this gap, drawing on new OECD/SWAC analysis on intra-regional livestock trade, food trade corridors, climate exposure and greenhouse gas emissions.
The session will focus on practical solutions to mobilise climate finance and blended investment for climate-resilient transport, cold chains, cross-border markets and digital data systems. These investments can reduce losses, lower emissions and strengthen resilience.
Bringing together policymakers, regional organisations, investors, development banks and climate funds, the event aims to turn evidence into actionable policies and investment opportunities for sustainable livestock systems and resilient regional food trade corridors in Africa.
The Kampala CAADP Declaration’s commitment to mobilize US$100 billion for Africa’s agrifood systems presents a major opportunity but faces challenges from fiscal constraints, rising debt, declining ODA, and limited private investment.
National Agrifood Systems Investment Plans (NASIPs) provide the primary mechanism for translating these commitments into action through innovative financing and strategic investment.
This side event will convene policymakers, development partners, the private sector, and youth representatives to explore practical innovative financing for NASIP implementation and introduce the Food System Financing Intelligence Platform, an analytical tool that helps to identify financing gaps and vulnerabilities, prioritize investments, and strengthen evidence-based decision-making.
Africa's digital agriculture is growing fast, but fragmented systems, weak governance, and inconsistent standards limit impact. This side event argues for shifting focus from isolated tools to a shared digital backbone–governance, interoperability, and trust mechanisms that make digital services scalable and trustworthy for smallholders.
Building on AU frameworks and country efforts like Kenya’s, the session explores: - Governance & rights – fair, transparent data stewardship. - Interoperability – standards and shared services to connect systems. - Security & trust – balancing openness with protection against misuse and cyber risks.
Designed for policymakers, donors, agritech, and farmers, it offers a practical governance agenda and action steps. The core message: Africa’s food systems will go digital–the question is whether they’ll be governed inclusively, securely, and accountably. Time to move from pilots to coherent infrastructure and lasting public value.
West Africa spends over $3.5 billion annually on rice imports despite strong production potential, due to weak, fragmented value chains. Millers and aggregators are central to the solution, as they anchor demand, organize supply, ensure quality, and connect farmers to markets.
However, they remain underfinanced, constrained by limited access to long-term capital, high working capital needs, and inadequate investment in aggregation, logistics, and processing. This session positions these actors as the drivers of transformation and presents the $500 million Rice Investment Vehicle as a targeted solution.
The Vehicle will mobilize blended finance, de-risk investments, and scale competitive rice businesses. Through a high-level, deal-focused dialogue, the event will showcase investable enterprises, engage investors, and catalyze commitments to accelerate private sector-led growth in West Africa’s rice sector.
Food Loss and Waste (FLW) is estimated to contribute approximately 10% to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Yet, around 30% of food produced is never harvested, sold or consumed, leading to climate impacts, environmental degradation and economic losses.
Addressing FLW contributes to food and nutritional security, job creation and supports more resilient and sustainable livelihoods. Solutions to address this problem already exist. By reducing FLW, countries can advance a more circular economy that is less dependent on imports of food and agricultural inputs.
At this event, IKEA Foundation and partners will share lessons learned from supporting innovations, policy and investments to reduce FLW and call upon other funders to step up their investments in this important field of work.
This Finance Day side event will show how GEF-8 Food Systems Integrated Program helps countries turn food systems transformation ambitions into investment-ready opportunities with climate, biodiversity, land restoration and livelihood benefits.
With climate finance institutions, multilaterals, public development banks and partners, the session will explore how to mobilize and scale finance for integrated food systems. Participants will hear from FSIP teams in Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda on investment pipelines, financing solutions and private sector engagement.
The discussion will highlight lessons from GEF, IFAD, FAO and partners on de-risking, enabling environments and aligning food systems finance with climate and nature priorities. Participants can expect insights, partnerships and pathways to boost investment readiness and impact across Africa. Inclusive growth for all people.
The success of the African Development Bank's African Emergency Food Production Facility (AEFPF) has largely been driven by its emphasis on adaptive management and the continuous adjustment of implementation strategies based on real-time monitoring data, field feedback, and evolving operational conditions.
This flexible approach enabled the AEFPF to respond rapidly to the food crisis while ensuring that implementation challenges were addressed in a timely manner. Given the scale of results achieved across participating countries, the AEFPF represents an important operational model for emergency agricultural response programs aimed at addressing food insecurity.
Capturing and disseminating the knowledge generated during implementation is therefore critical to inform future crisis response operations and strengthen the design of similar interventions in other regions.
Africa faces a paradox. The continent's population is projected to double by 2050, urbanisation is reshaping diets toward higher protein consumption, and the FAO projects that aquatic food production must rise by 74% to meet demand.
Yet aquaculture remains under-prioritised in national policy frameworks and absent from continental conversations about food systems transformation. This panel, convened by African Aquaculture Business Leaders Network (AABLN), brings that paradox into the centre of the AFS Forum 2026 agenda.
The session will make the case that aquaculture is one of the highest-leverage investments African governments, development finance institutions and private investors can make this decade, and will set out what is needed to unlock it. Attendees will hear what is working today and engage directly with sector leaders on partnerships that can accelerate growth.
We invite others to partner with AABLN – translating AFSF conversations into measurable sector advancement.
Africa’s food systems face pressure from climate change, environmental degradation, economic shocks, and rising demand, reducing productivity and threatening livelihoods.
This requires investment in climate-resilient agriculture, sustainable landscapes, energy transitions, agrobiodiversity and ecosystem restoration, recognizing that mitigation can generate adaptation benefits and viable business opportunities. Yet finance remains skewed towards mitigation.
Fragmented frameworks, weak risk-sharing and gaps between policy and practice persist, while smallholders, local institutions, women and youth remain excluded. This calls for scaled, investment-ready, partnership-driven approaches that better align mitigation finance with adaptation outcomes.
This event will convene key actors to identify practical pathways to mobilize finance, scale locally led solutions and strengthen implementation, including through improved financial instruments responding to CAADP’s implementation.
This event will bring together youth agripreneurship accelerator labs and innovation challenge initiatives across Africa i.e.Youth Food Lab, Go Gettaz Agri-preneurship Prize Competition, to join forces to build a robust ecosystem alliance to meaningfully support youth-led enterprises to move from incubation to scale.
By bundling forces, identifying complementarities, and exchanging best practices among partners, we aim to break siloes and duplication of efforts, and to create a platform that facilitates scale of challenge-based learning approaches that have proven successful in various contexts to stimulate entrepreneurial mindsets among students and move youth-led enterprises from incubation to scale.
Together, we can unlock each other’s platforms, build bankable youth-led agribusiness pipelines and leverage pooled funding to unlock catalytic finance for youth-led agripreneurs from early-stage to scale for Africa’s food systems transformation.
The 2026 report on the Status of Women in Agrifood Systems in sub-Saharan Africa presents the trends of gender gaps and highlights policies and strategies that need increased attention. What is clear is that sustainable change requires moving beyond participation and simply integrating women into existing structures, toward gender-transformative approaches (GTAs).
Yet despite growing recognition of their effectiveness, GTAs remain insufficiently integrated into food systems investments. In commemoration of the International Year of the Woman Famer, this session provides a critical platform to push for policy reforms that break down the systemic barriers and streamline these GTAs.
This event will explore practical pathways for catalyzing meaningfully systems transformation. The event will convene actors to catalyze action and partnerships for integrating GTAs into agrifood systems development, ensuring equitable participation, leadership, and benefits for women and men smallholders.
The Agrifood Systems Accelerator is a multi-partner initiative that helps governments translate their food systems priorities into financeable and implementable actions. This high-level multistakeholder event will share progress on the Accelerator and socialize its offer to African governments and other stakeholders.
Anchored in countries' own National Pathways, the Accelerator brings partners around a single country request and moves through 3 sequenced phases.
Ministers, National Convenors, and agrifood systems leaders will share perspectives on what it takes for partner contributions to add up to a coherent response–reducing fragmentation, deepening analysis and policy coherence, strengthening monitoring and learning, and positioning pathway priorities for delivery at scale.
Participants can expect candid conversation and the opportunity to provide structured feedback on the initiative’s priorities and working methods.
Achieving agricultural innovation at scale demands more than scientific advances; it requires integrating innovations into investment programs, government systems, and market channels that can reach farmers nationally and regionally.
CGIAR’s Scaling for Impact Program (S4I) has created a clearinghouse model to connect proven agricultural innovations with IFI-financed projects, with the TAAT program (in partnership with AfDB) serving as a leading example. A similar approach is underway with the Asian Development Bank.
The upcoming AFSF 2026 session in Kigali offers a chance to showcase this model, share IFI partner experiences, and announce expansion to new partners like IsDB and IFAD, marking an important milestone for scaling impact through collaboration.
This panel will explore how blended finance can unlock investment across different segments of Africa’s agricultural sector–from early-stage ventures to scalable agribusinesses.
Bringing together investors, fund managers, development partners and an agribusiness leader, the discussion will examine how different forms of capital need to work together to address distinct market gaps.
Using practical examples and lessons learnt from AgDevCo’s growth and ventures strategies, including investments in Rwanda, panellists will reflect on what it takes to mobilise private capital into high-impact agricultural opportunities.
The session will also highlight how blended capital structures can support institutional scale–illustrated by AgDevCo’s recent credit rating–while enabling innovation at the SME level.
African food systems face growing climate shocks, soil degradation, rising input costs, and market volatility, creating major risks for farmers, agribusinesses, and investors.
Although regenerative agriculture is widely recognized for its environmental benefits, such as soil restoration, reduced dependency on costly inputs, improved circularity, yield stabilization under climate stress, supply chains strengthening, and access to climate finance and premium markets, its role in business resilience and investment strategies remains underrepresented in policy and private-sector discussions.
This side event will explore regenerative agriculture as a scalable and commercially viable pathway for resilient agrifood systems in Africa. It will showcase business models, financing mechanisms, and partnerships that align profitability, resilience, and sustainability, while identifying evidence gaps and opportunities to accelerate investment and adoption at scale.
This session will highlight how investment in school feeding can drive transformation of the African Food System towards improved nutrition and food security outcomes, increased environmental sustainability, climate resilience, and social equity; a win-win-win opportunity.
The combined urgency to strengthen human resource development and employment prospects through education and to transform food systems in the context of climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation, can unlock the future.
Bringing together people who have earned their stripes in innovative approaches to school feeding, supplying healthy, diversified, culturally appropriate, sustainably produced, nutritious meals, the plenary debate will discuss the investments required and financing methods they used.
Pro’s, con’s and effectiveness of the food systems impact of these approaches will be put to scrutiny, leading to a call for action.
Healthy soils are the foundation of Africa’s food systems, yet ongoing degradation continues to undermine agricultural productivity, food security, nutrition, and resilience. Following the African Fertilizer and Soil Health Action Plan and the CAADP Kampala Declaration, countries are increasingly prioritizing soil health as a pathway to sustainable agricultural transformation.
This session will convene ministers, development partners, research institutions, private sector actors, farmer organizations, and technical experts to explore how Africa can scale sustainable agriculture through improved soil management.
Drawing on lessons from the Soil Values Programme and partners, it will highlight innovations, partnerships, policies, and practical solutions that restore soils, boost productivity, strengthen resilience, improve livelihoods, and enhance food and nutrition security across the continent.
This side event will explore how strategic investments in Africa’s livestock sector can drive inclusive economic growth, create jobs, strengthen food and nutrition security, and build resilient agri-food systems across the continent.
Aligned with the Africa Food Systems Forum 2026 theme, the session will examine opportunities to transform livestock systems through improved market linkages, value addition, innovation, trade integration, and private sector engagement.
The discussion will bring together ministers, policymakers, development partners, private sector actors, researchers, and farmer organizations to share experiences, challenges, and scalable solutions for unlocking the full potential of Africa’s livestock economy.
Participants can expect an interactive dialogue on investment priorities, regional trade opportunities, youth and women inclusion, and strategies to strengthen livestock value chains for sustainable and resilient growth.
As investments in Africa’s food systems continue to grow, there is increasing demand for credible evidence that these investments are delivering lasting, system-wide transformation.
This session will bring together policymakers, researchers, development practitioners, donors, and data experts to explore how food system transformation can be effectively measured, validated, and translated into action.
Participants will engage with real-world case studies, innovative measurement approaches, digital tools, and emerging methodologies–including AI, big data, and complexity-aware evaluation frameworks–that are helping to capture non-linear change across food systems.
The session will also examine lessons from implementation, discuss trade-offs and unintended outcomes, and explore how evidence can strengthen accountability, inform policy, and guide future investments toward more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable food systems in Africa.
Building on the AFCI plenary discussion, this invitation-only roundtable will bring together a select group of African financial institutions, development finance institutions, regional bodies, governments, private sector leaders and development partners to discuss what it will take to move priority food corridor opportunities from strategic ambition to implementation.
Rather than focusing on specific transactions, the discussion will explore the conditions required to strengthen investment readiness, improve coordination, validate emerging AFCI findings, and test potential governance and financing approaches for food corridor development.
The session will also help shape a practical roadmap beyond AFSF, including priorities for the AFCI Delivery Lab
Two important gaps must be bridged for CAADP Kampala public expenditure tracking to be realistically implementable. First, a definition of public expenditure in agrifood systems and a methodology to apply it with data are missing for proper tracking.
Second, the tracking should not be first about reaching a percentage of total expenditure but rather defining optimal allocations of current expenditure levels that allow to both increase the value for public money and set benchmarks against which countries could make the tracking going forward.
FAO is fully equipped with tools to bridge these two gaps to support the implementation of the CAADP Strategy and Action Plan 2025-2035.
The side event seeks to showcase these tools, in particular a new methodology to define and classify agrifood systems public expenditure and a tool to optimize its allocation and to hear from countries about their experience in working with FAO to use these tools to inform planning and budgeting.
This side event will launch the Africa Rural Climate Adaptation Finance Mechanism (ARCAFIM), a regional blended finance initiative supporting climate resilience in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. The session will focus on how private sector-led climate adaptation finance can expand affordable green financing for smallholder farmers, rural micro-enterprises and agri-MSMEs.
Participants will hear from IFAD, Equity Bank, co-financiers, governments and partners on ARCAFIM’s vision, delivery model, de-risking approach and technical assistance support. The event will also explore opportunities for regional cooperation and potential replication of the model beyond East Africa.
This side event will explore how Brazil’s experience in building inclusive and participatory food systems governance can contribute to strengthening agri-food systems transformation in Africa.
Drawing on lessons from the Brazilian National Food and Nutrition Security System (SISAN), the session will discuss governance mechanisms, social participation, intersectoral coordination, and public policies that support food security, nutrition, and sustainable food production.
The discussion will highlight opportunities for South-South cooperation and knowledge exchange between Brazil and African countries, particularly in advancing resilient, equitable, and people-centered food systems.
Participants can expect an interactive dialogue among policymakers, researchers, and civil society representatives focused on practical pathways for collaboration, innovation, and policy adaptation across different national contexts.
Recent shocks–from the Russia–Ukraine war to the Red Sea crisis–show that African food systems remain exposed to volatile grain, fuel and fertilizer markets. These disruptions have raised prices, worsened poverty and hunger risks, and renewed calls for self-sufficiency (Arndt et al., 2023; Mwakiwa et al., 2025).
Maritime chokepoints such as the Red Sea/Suez corridor are systemic pressure points where rerouting cascades across trade networks (Pratson, 2023). For import-dependent African economies, this increases vulnerability but also strengthens the case for diversified sourcing, regional integration and value addition.
Resilience alone is insufficient: agency, sustainability and systemic governance are needed to address policy incoherence and power asymmetries. AfCFTA and CAADP can drive structural transformation. The challenge is balancing autonomy with integration, affordability with domestic production, national politics with regional markets, and capital with sovereign priorities.
Africa's agrifood systems receive barely 7 per cent of global climate finance – even as every dollar invested in adaptation returns more than ten in benefits.
This session convenes national climate finance experts, GCF National Designated Authorities and cooperating partners around a practical question: how can adaptation and mitigation finance be structured to catalyse agrifood market investment?
AGRA's USD 105 million GCF-financed RE-GAIN programme – the Fund's first dedicated food-loss-reduction investment, active in seven countries – anchors the exchange, alongside partners that have moved innovative food systems programmes to approved financing.
Aligned with the Kampala CAADP Declaration's targets to mobilise USD 100 billion and halve post-harvest losses by 2035, the session will distil what works and map the stakeholders and capital sources needed. Participants leave with lessons, a stakeholder map and the building blocks of a climate finance strategy for food systems
Beans are essential to food security and livelihoods across Africa. PABRA, a partnership involving the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, national agricultural research systems, and value chain actors, works to improve bean production, commercialization, and consumption.
Operating through a network of more than 934 partners in 31 countries, PABRA has developed and scaled innovations that have strengthened food security and livelihoods across sub-Saharan Africa.
Over the past three decades, more than 43.5 million farmers–58.1% of them women–have accessed improved bean varieties, increasing yields by an average of 36%, with yields doubling or tripling in countries such as Ethiopia and Tanzania.
These results have also created opportunities for more than 500 SMEs commercializing bean-based products and linking over four million farmers to markets. The event will celebrate PABRA’s 30-year legacy and call for renewed action as it enters its next phase of building resilient food systems.
Our proposed Breakthrough Event (or pre-event workshop), focused on “Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Smallholder Farmer Advisory,” will take place Monday, August 31, 8:30am – 5pm with a group of 30-40 core partners to the Gates Foundation in this space. The general goals for the day together are (details being shaped): 1.
Share learnings across AI advisory grantees across countries 2. Create a common understanding around shared goals, indicators and targets 3. Troubleshoot country-level implementation challenges The side event will include a plenary session; country updates; global updates; and working / workshop-style sessions with 1-3 technical themes.
Currently in Africa, more than 2 million people, majority of them women and youth, are deriving their livelihoods from an insect-based bioeconomy. This emerging and rapidly growing model is the result of efforts by icipe and partners to transform insects into investable assets.
This session will discuss the evidence, technologies and innovations underpinning insect-based enterprises. It will highlight the policy, enabling frameworks and environments that support insect-based enterprises and national and regional sustainable development agendas.
Ultimately, the session will explore opportunities and pathways for strategic engagement with communities, governments, regional bodies, development partners, financial institutions and the private sector.
The proposed two-hour side event, jointly organized by CORAF and GGGI, will comprise two one-hour sessions on climate finance and institutional capacity.
Session 1 – Youth Climate Finance: Explore innovative financing solutions that improve access to climate finance for youth-led climate-smart agribusinesses by combining CORAF's agricultural innovations with GGGI's green investment expertise to enhance investment readiness and scalability.
Session 2 – GCF Accreditation: Share CORAF's experience and lessons learned from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) accreditation process, providing practical insights on institutional readiness, accreditation requirements, and key success factors to strengthen African institutions' access to climate finance.
HarvestPlus proposes a high-level session at the AFS Summit to showcase proven scaling and commercialization models that have successfully accelerated the adoption of innovations such as biofortified crops and can be replicated for improved seed varieties, climate-smart technologies, and other agricultural innovations.
The session will explore the misconceptions, challenges, and opportunities that have influenced food security outcomes across Africa while identifying practical pathways for scaling successful solutions.
Drawing on experiences from across the continent, discussions will highlight ecosystem approaches that mobilize private sector investment, strengthen public-private partnerships, expand institutional markets, and foster enabling policies.
The session will demonstrate how catalytic investments can drive sustainable demand for nutritious foods, transform agri-food systems, improve livelihoods, and deliver better nutrition outcomes at scale.
Beans are essential to food security and livelihoods across Africa. PABRA, a partnership involving the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, national agricultural research systems, and value chain actors, works to improve bean production, commercialization, and consumption.
Operating through a network of more than 934 partners in 31 countries, PABRA has developed and scaled innovations that have strengthened food security and livelihoods across sub-Saharan Africa.
Over the past three decades, more than 43.5 million farmers–58.1% of them women–have accessed improved bean varieties, increasing yields by an average of 36%, with yields doubling or tripling in countries such as Ethiopia and Tanzania.
These results have also created opportunities for more than 500 SMEs commercializing bean-based products and linking over four million farmers to markets. The event will celebrate PABRA’s 30-year legacy and call for renewed action as it enters its next phase of building resilient food systems.
This session presents research on the “price cliff” phenomenon in African agri-food systems, in which expanding agricultural production within constrained Structural Adjustment Markets causes sharp farmgate price declines that erode smallholder incomes and disincentivise future investment.
Drawing on econometric and qualitative evidence from Zambia, Tanzania, and Ghana, BFAP researchers present findings on price volatility, farmer supply response, and the feedback effects on input use and productivity.
Following the presentation, invited value chain practitioners including farmers, traders, processors, and policymakers offer structured responses before the discussion is opened to the full room.
“From grassroots to grasstops: Enabling successful public-private-philanthropic partnerships” - A facilitated discussion on the successful conceptualisation, structural formation, and implementation of PPPs to enable success in challenging agricultural landscapes.
Learning from PepsiCo’s continued work in Ethiopia’s potato value chains and edible oils sectors, the discussion will be grounded in market realities and partners’ experiences from seed to store shelf.
Across Africa, advances in weather forecasting, climate science, artificial intelligence, and digital technologies are creating unprecedented opportunities to strengthen agricultural resilience. Yet millions of farmers still lack access to trusted, actionable advice to guide decisions on when to plant, fertilize, manage pests, or harvest.
Nationally owned Digital Climate Advisory Systems (DCAS) are emerging as a new model for transforming weather, climate, environmental, and agronomic science into trusted agromet intelligence delivered at scale.
This session will bring together government leaders, regional institutions, development partners, investors, and implementing organizations to share lessons from countries already deploying DCAS and explore the partnerships, investments, and institutional models needed to scale sustainable national systems across Africa.
Regional Launch: Alliance Strategy 2026–2030 for Africa Africa's food systems face growing pressure from climate change, biodiversity loss, and persistent undernourishment – yet the continent holds extraordinary potential for transformation.
With 80% of land degradation in sub-Saharan Africa driven by soil erosion and agriculture accounting for 58% of the continent's greenhouse gas emissions, the urgency for science-based solutions has never been greater.
This side event marks the regional launch of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT's Strategy 2026–2030 for Africa, presenting a science-backed roadmap connecting biodiversity, climate action, nutrition, and inclusive markets.
Through partnerships with governments, farmers, and research institutions, participants will explore how research translates into real impact for farmers, communities, and ecosystems – and how science-based evidence can unlock investment at scale to nourish nations, grow jobs, and build resilience.
GPSEAP Africa Agroecology Innovations event brings together Agricultura Extension and Advisory Services (AEAS) stakeholders to showcase transformative agroecology solutions driving sustainable food systems transformation in Africa Farming Systems and Food Value Chains.
The sessions will amplify practical innovations, scalable models, policy experiences, and investment opportunities that provide transformative solutions -including climate resilience, soil health, biodiversity, farmer incomes, and food security.
Particular emphasis will be placed on Agroecology last-mile delivery systems, digital advisory services, youth and women inclusion, market-responsive agroecology, and partnerships for scaling agroecological impact.
Participants can expect high-level policy-oriented dialogue, Country experiences, innovation showcases, and actionable pathways for mainstreaming agroecology into national food systems, extension services, and agricultural investment agendas across Africa.
Soil degradation across Africa is undermining agricultural productivity for around 485 million people. Conservation agriculture can improve soil health, increase yields and strengthen resilience, yet significant barriers remain to financing this transition at scale.
This session explores how carbon markets could help finance the transition to more sustainable agriculture in Africa. The event will examine the opportunities and the barriers: including reducing MRV costs, tech enable advisory systems, transparent benefit sharing and better market incentives.
An opening keynote will explore the links between degradation, food security and carbon markets, and will launch Welthungerhilfe’s Carbon & Soil Health Platform as a new initiative to addressing barriers to scale through innovation, research and strategic partnerships.
A high-level panel discussion will explore links between restoration, soil health and carbon finance to improved food & nutrition security outcomes.
Africa’s agrifood systems cannot achieve sustainable transformation without tackling persistent gender inequalities and social exclusion. Progress has been made in integrating gender into agricultural R4D, yet institutional capacity, long‑term financing, and coordination remain fragmented.
Meanwhile, global backlash against gender equality and declining development assistance risk reversing hard‑won gains. A critical shortage of African researchers with advanced expertise in gender, social inclusion, and agrifood transformation further limits progress.
This event convenes policymakers, researchers, universities, development partners, women and youth organizations, and private sector actors to discuss establishing an African‑led Center of Excellence on Gender and Social Inclusion Research in Agriculture.
The session explores partnership pathways, capacity gaps, sustainability mechanisms, and strengthening inclusive, evidence‑informed agrifood systems transformation across Africa.
Building on donor-supported programmes, there is a growing need to scale inclusive agribusiness ecosystems in a sustainable and investment-ready way. This session will explore practical approaches to moving beyond isolated projects toward market systems that unlock growth, resilience, and job creation, particularly for youth- and women-led enterprises.
Bringing together a donor, a private sector actor, an economist, and an entrepreneur, the discussion will examine what enables scaling, mobilizing investment, and building sustainable ecosystems. The session will generate practical insights on how different actors can address structural constraints and support more inclusive and scalable agri-food systems across Africa.
This high-level roundtable lunch will bring together senior African business leaders, government representatives and FAO leadership to discuss investment and partnership opportunities for agrifood systems transformation in Africa.
The conversation will explore how closer public-private cooperation, enabling policies and targeted investment could support innovation, market development, job creation and the growth of African agrifood enterprises.
Participants will exchange practical perspectives on barriers to investment and identify opportunities for future engagement between FAO, governments, financial institutions and private sector actors.
ACEN will convene CIRF partners, Rwandan circular agri-food SMEs, investors and policymakers to move enterprise solutions from pilot to scale. CIRF has engaged 370 SMEs, established 70 market linkages and created 73 green jobs.
Its experience shows that circular ventures can create products, cut input costs and strengthen food security, but face a common bottleneck: finance for equipment, certification and market growth. SMEs will present their case studies in coffee, compost, mushrooms and bio-inputs.
Investors, government and enterprise leaders will examine finance structures that can close this gap. Participants will get practical lessons for designing investable circular food businesses in Rwanda and across Africa.
Public food procurement is one of the largest yet most underutilized public investments for transforming food systems in Africa. Governments already spend significant resources on school meals, hospitals and other institutional food purchases.
When designed strategically, these investments can improve nutrition, create markets for smallholder farmers and SMEs, generate jobs for women and youth, strengthen local economies and support climate-resilient production. This session will explore how public procurement can advance healthier diets, economic growth and resilient food systems.
Drawing on experiences from Kenya, Nigeria and other African countries, participants will discuss successful models, implementation challenges and opportunities for scaling action. The session will bring together governments, development partners, private sector actors and civil society to identify opportunities for collaboration and action.
Sight and Life (SAL) work on fermentation includes the first-of-its-kind Special Report on Fermentation, and a new programme –Foundations for Scaling Fermented Foods in Nigeria and Ethiopia– generating country-level evidence to guide safe, effective scaleup of fermented foods across Africa.
SAL proposes to launch the report and programme to spotlight fermentation's potential to combat malnutrition, improve livelihoods and reduce food's climate impact. This session is the flagship to position fermentation on the continental agenda and anchor the evidence base for Ethiopia's national roadmap.
Session objectives 1)Launch the Special Report on Fermentation to a high-level, continental audience. 2)Position fermentation on the African food-systems agenda as a climate-smart, nutrition-sensitive solution strengthening local livelihoods - especially for women producers.
3)Inspire collaboration: driving innovation, attracting investment, and supporting evidence-informed policy on fermented foods
Do Large Language Models (LLMs) reflect gender needs? Is AI use designed to serve women? How can models better ensure inclusivity? As digitalisation, AI, big data, and digital platforms rapidly transform African agrifood systems, a critical question remains: are these technologies being designed with women, or merely deployed around them?
This thought-provoking session will explore how digital innovations–from advisory services and learning platforms to data systems, finance, and AI-enabled tools–can be designed to drive more inclusive and resilient food systems.
It brings together women leaders, innovators, policymakers, and investors to examine whether current AI models and digital systems adequately reflect women’s needs, experiences, and priorities.
Participants can expect evidence-based insights, inspiring leadership stories, and practical discussions on how to embed gender equality into the design, governance, financing, and scaling of digital agriculture solutions.
The Kampala Declaration reaffirms Africa's commitment to transforming agrifood systems as a pathway to food security, resilience, economic growth & shared prosperity.
It recognizes that achieving this vision requires inclusive, climate-resilient & market-oriented food systems that create opportunities for all–particularly women & young people, who are central to Africa's demographic & economic future.
Realizing these commitments depends on whether food systems transformation deliberately addresses structural inequalities that prevent women & young people from participating fully in & benefiting from agrifood economies.
This event will mobilize political commitment, partnerships, & investments to support gender equality, women’s empowerment & the progressive realization of the critical importance of equitable food systems. Discussions will explore how to coordinate investments that expand economic opportunities for a diversity of women.
FOOD 2050 is a feature-length documentary narrated, and executive produced by EGOT winner Viola Davis. The film originated from The Rockefeller Foundation’s Food System Vision Prize, a first-of-its-kind global call inviting anyone, anywhere to propose a vision for a nourishing, regenerative, and equitable food system by 2050.
Do Large Language Models (LLMs) reflect gender needs? Is AI use designed to serve women? How can models better ensure inclusivity? As digitalisation, AI, big data, and digital platforms rapidly transform African agrifood systems, a critical question remains: are these technologies being designed with women, or merely deployed around them?
This thought-provoking session will explore how digital innovations–from advisory services and learning platforms to data systems, finance, and AI-enabled tools–can be designed to drive more inclusive and resilient food systems.
It brings together women leaders, innovators, policymakers, and investors to examine whether current AI models and digital systems adequately reflect women’s needs, experiences, and priorities.
Participants can expect evidence-based insights, inspiring leadership stories, and practical discussions on how to embed gender equality into the design, governance, financing, and scaling of digital agriculture solutions.
This RFIP Partners Breakfast will showcase the emerging Rwanda Food Innovation Ecosystem Strategy (RFIES) and convene partners with a critical role to play in delivering its vision for Rwanda to become Africa's leading food innovation ecosystem by 2035.
It will provide details to raise awareness of the Strategy's vision, flagship programs, and specialized delivery vehicle, the Rwanda Food Innovation Partnership (RFIP). Partners will have opportunity to raise questions and opportunities for advancing the vision together in the coming year.
The Breakfast will finally introduce the RFIP Partners Group as the principal platform for multi-stakeholder coordination and collaboration in delivering this strategic vision, with clarity on how existing and prospective partners can engage in support of Rwanda's Food Innovation Ecosystem Strategy to drive transformational results for food security and nutrition, jobs and livelihoods, and nature in Rwanda and across Africa.
This session convenes senior policymakers, researchers, investors and private-sector leaders from Africa and Saudi Arabia to test how a KAUST–Africa Food Systems Translation Platform can move Africa–GCC food relationships beyond commodity trade toward structured partnerships in sourcing, processing, and market development.
Framing remarks and a moderated panel will surface how GCC capital, research capacity, and market demand can support more resilient African agri-food corridors. Participants then join parallel working roundtables on AI and food systems intelligence, policy and investment, and soil health and agri-innovation, each producing concrete takeaways.
The session closes with a plenary readout identifying a pathway for continued dialogue on a broader KAUST–Africa food systems platform beyond AFSF.
The Next Ag Investment Frontier Session will bring together donors, investors, and strategic partners to explore opportunities for accelerating agricultural transformation in Africa through investment in proven agricultural innovation pipeline.
The session will showcase AATF's 20+ years of experience in transferring, commercializing, and scaling agricultural technologies that improve productivity, resilience, and livelihoods.
Participants will gain insights into AATF's unique value proposition, measurable impact, and strategic vision for the next decade, including scaling market-ready technologies and advancing next-generation innovations that address farmers' evolving needs.
The session will also present investable opportunities, strengthen existing partnerships, cultivate new financing relationships, and catalyse follow-up engagements that translate into strategic collaborations and sustainable investment.
This Breakthrough session presents REWARD as a continental model for coordinated regional investment: it will highlight the innovative financing mechanisms mobilized through the African Development Fund, the multi-country governance arrangements, and early implementation results since the programme's launch in 2025.
The discussion will explore how structured partnerships among donors, governments, the private sector, and regional organizations can turn isolated national gains into genuinely regional rice resilience, while placing youth and women at the heart of job and value creation along the rice chain.
Innovation is essential to transforming agriculture, but complex farming challenges require dedicated space for bold ideas. This AFSF session showcases Incubating Innovation in Sustainable Farming, a key pillar of the CGIAR Sustainable Farming Program (SFP) and home to its Competitive Innovation Fund.
The fund applies private-sector portfolio management to public R&D, supporting high-risk, high-reward innovations that fall outside conventional investment pathways. The session features next-gen solutions: AI tools to reduce greenhouse gases, pest early-warning systems, smart solar irrigation, climate finance tech, AI-driven crop design, and satellite fertilizer advisories.
Through a live pitch format, CGIAR scientists will connect with donors, investors, governments, and private partners to explore opportunities for co-funding, co-development, and strategic collaboration.
Rwanda has made remarkable progress toward universal school feeding while advancing ambitious climate and clean energy goals. As the country modernizes school meal preparation, clean cooking offers an opportunity to improve efficiency, strengthen food safety, reduce emissions, and create healthier working environments.
This roundtable will bring together government, researchers, development partners, investors, and practitioners to discuss emerging findings from a pre-feasibility study on centralized and hybrid clean kitchen models for Rwanda's national school feeding programme.
Participants will explore operational, financial, and policy pathways for scaling clean cooking infrastructure, including opportunities for blended finance, climate finance, and carbon markets. The session will identify practical partnerships and investment pathways to accelerate Rwanda's transition to cleaner, more resilient institutional cooking systems.
Soil Values Programs Advisory Committee Meeting
This invite-only roundtable will explore one of the biggest barriers to scaling climate and agrifood investment: the shortage of investment-ready pipeline. The session will present recent research showing that the key constraint is not the availability of capital, but the lack of investable opportunities.
Participants will discuss why pre-investment technical assistance remains chronically underfunded, and how fragmented approaches–where individual funds build separate TA facilities and donor programmes often operate independently of investor needs–create inefficiencies.
The roundtable will also explore a proposed shared investment-readiness facility that pools pre-investment support, strengthens feedback between investors and pipeline developers, and uses a returnable-grant model to recycle catalytic capital and accelerate investment-ready pipeline development.
Recent disruptions in Iran have shown the vulnerability of fossil-fuel-dependent agrifood systems, creating urgency for African governments to accelerate renewable energy-powered agricultural value chains. Rising energy costs and supply shocks threaten productivity, increase post-harvest losses, reduce farmer incomes, and undermine climate resilience.
Regenerative agriculture, combined with renewable energy for irrigation, processing, storage and value addition, offers a pathway to build resilient, productive and competitive food systems.
While the CAADP Kampala Declaration calls for stronger cross-sector coordination, implementation remains constrained by fragmented policies, weak investment pipelines and limited evidence for scale.
Drawing on July 2026 policy dialogues convened by SNV, AGRA and GOGLA in Kenya and Uganda, and a synthesis by AKADEMIYA2063, this session explores pathways to strengthen policy coherence, mobilise investment and scale integrated food-energy solutions.
Africa's RTB sector could generate more than USD 140 billion in additional market value by 2050 but only if investment, policy, and innovation can scale fast enough.
Root, tuber, and banana crops (RTBs) including banana, cassava, potato, sweetpotato and yam contribute over 40% of the continent’s food production.This side event, co-organised by CIP and IITA, brings together evidence from innovative seed system initiatives alongside national partnership models to chart a shared agenda for continental scale-up of root, tuber and banana (RTB) crops.
Participants will explore proven innovations in rapid multiplication technologies, youth-led seed entrepreneurship, multi-sectoral community interventions, and commercial processing and export pathways.
The session will catalyse named investment and policy commitments from governments, development finance institutions, and agribusinesses to accelerate RTB transformation across Africa.
Agroecology is increasingly recognized as a pathway to more resilient, productive, and sustainable food systems. The African Union's CAADP Strategy and Action Plan 2026–2035 provides an important framework for advancing sustainable and inclusive agrifood system transformation.
This event will explore the evolving agroecology policy landscape across Africa, highlighting emerging National Agroecology Strategies and policy reforms. Participants will share experiences on integrating agroecological principles into agricultural, climate, biodiversity, and food systems policies.
Through a panel discussion of policymakers, researchers, and practitioners, the session will examine lessons learned, opportunities for scaling successful approaches, and pathways for creating enabling policies. The event aims to support countries developing National Agroecology Strategies and provide actionable recommendations.
Across Africa, climate shocks, environmental risks, and global health crises and regional conflicts strain food systems and undermine agricultural resilience. Drawing on climate risk evidence continent-wide, this session explores how countries can shift from crisis response to preparedness and food sovereignty.
Examples span Madagascar, where resilience depends on hazard exposure, risk perception, and institutional constraints; IFPRI's work with governments in Nigeria, Malawi, Kenya, Zambia, and Senegal on anticipatory action and risk financing; and the World Bank's Food Systems Resilience Program, showcasing climate-smart innovations like resilient crop varieties, seed systems, and farmer-led mechanization.
The session links national lessons to regional frameworks (COMESA, SADC), fostering dialogue and partnerships. Participants leave with practical strategies and a shared vision for resilient, sovereign African food systems built on country-led evidence and regional collaboration.
This workshop will present the emerging CGIAR Africa Strategy to a wide range of African partners and stakeholders, inviting feedback, inputs and guidance to strengthen its relevance, ownership and impact.
The strategy will be shared as a draft framework for discussion, not a finalized institutional document, creating space for co-creation with governments, regional and subregional organizations, African research institutions, farmer organizations, private-sector actors, finance and development partners, and civil society.
Participants will reflect on how the strategy can better align with continental priorities, including the Kampala Declaration, CAADP implementation, climate resilience, food systems transformation and the lead-up to COP32 in Ethiopia.
Through facilitated discussion, the workshop will identify priority areas for collaboration, gaps to address, and practical ways CGIAR can work with African partners to support science-based delivery, investment and impact at scale.
This event will explore FASA’s innovative architecture as a multi-donor fund-of-funds advancing Africa’s agri-food systems. Through catalytic capital, capacity building and a learning agenda, FASA supports investment funds contributing to food security, improved livelihoods and climate-smart agriculture solutions, offering a practical illustration of this year’s AFSF themes.
The session will showcase current investments and how FASA drives impact on the ground. It will also highlight FASA’s support to investee funds in strengthening climate resilience and integrating climate risk assessments into fund operations and investment processes through targeted training and technical assistance.
The session will also present FASA’s learning agenda, including its science-driven approach to evidencing impact, and its first report, The Landscape of Agri-SME Funds in Africa, providing key insights on impact opportunities, success factors and funding gaps across the sector.
TBC - will share asap
This interactive workshop, facilitated by Dr. Juergen Hagmann (PICOTeam), convenes a diverse group of African stakeholders – farmers, youth, women leaders, scientists, private sector actors, civil society, and policymakers – to co-shape CGIAR's Strategy to 2040.
The Strategy will guide global agricultural research and innovation investments over the next 15 years with the global south at is core.
Through participatory dialogue, participants will explore CGIAR's future value proposition, identify priorities for climate resilience, food systems transformation, and inclusive innovation, and surface strategic choices anchored in African realities and ambitions.
Outcomes will feed directly into CGIAR's stakeholder engagement process and the Synthesis Report informing the 2040 Strategy.
Following the 2nd Livestock Ministerial Deep Dive, this high-level networking reception will bring together Ministers and senior government representatives, development partners, investors, private sector leaders, youth innovators, and regional institutions to strengthen partnerships for livestock transformation across Africa.
The reception will provide an informal platform to continue discussions initiated during the Ministerial session, identify opportunities for collaboration and investment, and foster connections that can accelerate regional livestock value chains, trade, food security, and resilient food systems.
Participants will engage directly with decision-makers and sector leaders committed to advancing livestock's contribution to Africa's agri-food systems transformation.
Nourishing Nations: Investing in Africa's Food Future: Agriculture remains one of Africa's largest economic sectors and one of its greatest opportunities for creating jobs, improving food security, and building resilience to climate change. Yet unlocking that potential will require continued investment in innovation and stronger partnerships across sectors.
The Gates Foundation Partner Reception will convene leaders from government, research, philanthropy, and the private sector to discuss the ideas and investments shaping the future of African food systems. The event will feature remarks from Gates Foundation leadership and explore how innovation can help drive economic growth and opportunity across the continent.
The event is a solutions-focused session exploring what is already working for women across African food systems and how these approaches can be scaled in a changing financing and development landscape.
Convened by AECF, AWARD, FAO and IDRC, the session will feature short, TED-style talks from women farmers, agripreneurs, processors, researchers, innovators and ecosystem actors, followed by a moderated roundtable.
Participants can expect practical insights on women-centred value chains, enterprise and anchor models, leadership, research, market access and innovative financing approaches such as returnable grants and blended finance.
The session will conclude with actionable recommendations and partnership opportunities for governments, funders, financial institutions, the private sector and development partners seeking to advance equitable and inclusive food systems.
This session introduces IWMI's ENSO/El Niño intelligence tool – a forecasting platform covering 150+ countries that translates seasonal climate signals into actionable "ready-set-go" guidance for agriculture, food security, and water resources.
Developed under CGIAR's cross-programme collaboration with National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS), the tool has already produced regional bulletins for South Asia and is now expanding to East Africa through IGAD. Participants will see a live demonstration of the platform – including country-specific outlooks (e.g.
above-normal rainfall risk, drought windows) and real-time bulletin generation – and discuss how National Meteorological Services, ministries, and development partners across Africa can use it to anticipate and respond to El Niño-driven shocks before they escalate into food security crises.
How can we enable an ecosystem of thriving companies leveraging distributed energy in agri-value chains?
Acumen and SNV will kick off this session by presenting key findings from our research with Dalberg on the drivers of profitability and business health across the sector, including lessons from companies that have successfully scaled and those that have faced significant challenges.
Participants will then put these insights into practice through an interactive workshop, working in small groups to tackle the challenges facing a fictional company and crowdsource a broad range of solutions that could apply across similar businesses.
The goal is not to identify a single right answer, but to surface practical strategies, partnerships, and financing approaches that can help more agri-energy businesses to thrive.
Investing in Inclusive Seed Systems for Nutrition, Jobs, and Resilience: The Role of PPPs. This session highlights Seed Sector Investment Plan (SSIP), a tool developed to catalyze investment in seed system strengthening in African. The SSIP provides a framework that identifies priority investment opportunities for governments, the private sector, and development partners.
By addressing critical gaps, the tool supports development of strong seed systems that enhance nutrition, climate resilience, and productivity while creating jobs across the seed value chain.
The session will explore the roles of governments, the private sector, development banks, in building inclusive seed systems showcasing AGRA’s collaborations with key organizations to accelerate the commercialization and adoption of improved varieties.
The outcome is increased awareness, stronger partnerships, and mobilized investments to address bottlenecks and strengthen sustainable, resilient seed systems in Africa
This masterclass is intended to strengthen public sector capacities to design, implement and finance National Agrifood Systems Investment Plans (NASIPs) in support of the CAADP Kampala Declaration.
Drawing on FAO's systems approach framework and tools to operationalize it, the CAADP Kampala Declaration, AUDA-NEPAD's leadership on CAADP implementation, AGRA's experience in supporting private sector engagement in agricultural transformation, and country experiences, the programme will focus on practical tools that help governments move from evidence-based strategy development to implementation by strengthening coordination, prioritizing investments, optimizing the use of existing resources and then mobilizing additionally needed finance, and improving policy coherence across sectors and stakeholders.
As development assistance for agriculture evolves, governments, donors, and implementing organizations are exploring new approaches to sustainably improve smallholder farmer livelihoods.
This session will bring together senior representatives from donor organizations, governments, and the agricultural development community to discuss how changing funding priorities are reshaping partnerships and investment strategies.
The discussion will examine how stakeholders can better support farmers in transitioning to higher-value agricultural opportunities while building more resilient and sustainable agricultural systems.
Participants can expect a moderated conversation on emerging challenges, innovative partnership models, and practical opportunities for collaboration, followed by key reflections on priorities for the future of agricultural development.
As development assistance declines and Africa’s cities expand, transforming agri-food systems requires urgent innovation. This session bridges two critical pillars of food security: scaling investments in nutrition-sensitive school feeding and drastically reducing the 40% of food lost along informal urban supply chains.
Bringing together governments, the private sector, researchers, and farmers, this event showcases applied research–including insights from the CGIAR Food Frontiers and Security Science Program.
Participants will explore how inclusive partnerships can leverage local crop value chains, like biofortified crops, to improve school meals while building efficient, equitable urban markets. Join us to catalyze commitments on the policy and innovative financing needed to transition to resilient, locally driven food systems.
Africa faces a "livestock paradox": the continent hosts a large livestock herd, but the livestock sector is underperforming on the continent, not just in terms of investment (as per the Roundtable session), but also in terms of exports, trade, and production as well as poor nutritional quality of output (e.g., adulterated milk).
This impacts consumers and small producers (e.g., small-scale dairy/poultry/aqua, pastoralists), and processors. Through work in the sector in Kenya and Nigeria and an analysis of practices from other emerging markets, we have learned that there are 10 enablers that all countries should have in place to unlock a livestock transformation.
This session will share those 10 critical factors, including the business case and best practices behind them, and discuss with participants a potential path to scaling these enablers through mechanisms such as AfCFTA. The findings of this analysis are expected to be launched in a published report later in 2026 or early 2027.
Despite growing interest from investors, foundations, and corporates, finance for climate-resilient food systems has not kept pace with the scale of the challenge. Capital remains fragmented, measurement frameworks are inconsistent, and the gap between what is technically possible and what is financeable on the ground remains wide.
This roundtable, convened by Eurasia Group in partnership with Bayer, moves the conversation from diagnosis to action.
Anchored in two compelling case studies, it examines what it takes to structure, deploy, and scale investment in climate-resilient food systems to drive sustainable impact, and what foundations, investors, and corporate actors can do differently to unlock the finance the transition requires.
Inclusive finance is a cornerstone of unlocking food systems transformation - yet financing for agri-food systems in Africa remains too fragmented and constrained by established parameters to crowd-in transformational investment at scale.
A critical bottleneck sits at the wholesale level: too often, capital flows toward large-scale transformational investments or stops at small-scale financing, leaving the middle of the food system - where market creation happens – as an open investment opportunity.
Building the infrastructure, institutions, and incentives that enable sustained, inclusive economic activity, grow the pool of investable opportunities, and position DFIs as the critical bridge from early-stage market development to scalable, crowded-in capital is the market creation imperative.
As shifts in the global funding landscape accelerate interest in catalytic capital, blended finance, and private sector partnerships, critical questions remain about how these resources can drive inclusive food systems transformation, especially in fragile contexts.
Too often, innovative financing fails to reach smallholder producers, local enterprises, and rural retailers, or address the interconnected market barriers that limit systemic change in shock-prone contexts.
This session will explore evidence-based approaches to designing and deploying finance that delivers measurable outcomes in job creation, enterprise growth, climate resilience and food security.
Through practical examples and expert perspectives, participants will examine how financial instruments can better serve last-mile communities, how to build investable pipelines balancing social impact with investor returns, and how technical assistance can be effectively integrated and financed to maximize results.
This session explores how strategic investments in youth, research, and inclusive markets are driving a sustainable rice sector across Africa. Combining the distinct insights of three major initiatives, the discussion focuses on empowering the next generation to lead food systems transformation, build climate resilience, and generate decent employment.
The event showcases the RIZAO program’s multi-country framework in West Africa, demonstrating how coordinated investments, private sector engagement, and financial inclusion create job opportunities for young people and women across the entire rice value chain.
Alongside market development, the session highlights the AS1000 initiative, a bold effort to bridge the continent’s scientific capacity gap by supporting 1,000 African doctoral fellows. Together, these initiatives position structured workforce training, policy innovation, and agricultural entrepreneurship as strategic investments to secure Africa's future food security.
Rwanda’s food systems can drive jobs, nutrition, resilience, and economic growth, but limited access to finance continues to constrain youth- and women-led agrifood enterprises.
This event will bring together policymakers, investors, financial institutions, development partners, and entrepreneurs to unlock investment opportunities for inclusive and climate-resilient food systems.
Discussions will focus on innovative financing, investment readiness, nutrition-sensitive and climate-resilient agribusiness, digital solutions, and partnerships that expand market access and employment.
The event aims to catalyze partnerships, strengthen investment readiness, improve access to finance, and showcase the One UN approach as a platform for scaling food systems transformation in Rwanda and across Africa.
Agricultural extension and advisory services are fundamental to transforming Africa's food systems, yet they remain underfunded, fragmented, and unable to meet the needs of millions of farmers.
This session will bring together governments, farmer organizations, development partners, private sector actors, research institutions, and extension practitioners to accelerate collective action through the Africa Extension Coalition (AEC).
Participants will reflect on progress made since the Coalition's launch–including establishment of national coalitions, rollout of the Extension Systems Assessment Tool (Ext-SAT), digital community building, and government engagement–while identifying priorities for scaling impact across the continent.
The session will showcase practical country experiences, foster new partnerships, and mobilize commitments to strengthen farmer-centred extension systems that drive productivity, resilience, youth employment, and inclusive food systems transformation.
As ODA declines, Africa’s agri-food systems face a critical financing gap despite growing investment needs for food security, employment, and resilience. This session will explore how development actors can catalyse partnership models that mobilise public and private, partnerships for scalable impact.
The Smallholder SustaiNability Upscaling Programme (SSNUP) provides an example of such partnership funded by Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland, and managed by ADA in partnership with impact investors. By co-financing technical assistance and promoting investment across agricultural value chains.
SSNUP already reached 900,000 farmers and helped mobilise over EUR 600 M in private investment ssnup.org As another partnership model, the Path-to-growth framework regroups market key players around the objective of capacity building towards investment readiness. The framework not only supports SMEs but as well coordinates activities amongst the actors of the local ecosystem.
The session unveils Somalia's boldest food-systems initiative yet – 3 projects, 1 platform, a shared national vision.
Following an RF Catalytic Capital supported design, coordinated with the Government of Somalia, RFCC commits catalytic capital to 3 locally led initiatives: Nafaqo Kitchen, a school feeding programme led by Hormuud Salaama Foundation; Odoros, Somalia's first AI-powered national early warning platform; and a Somalia Nutrition & Food Security Alliance to be co-led by Somali Banks.
These nationally owned projects form Somalia's first integrated platform where food security, climate intelligence, and sustainable finance converge. Somalia is open and eager to attract investment. The session convenes a robust discussion on the way forward - from design to delivery. Above all, it signals that Somalia is building its own solutions.
Public, private and philanthropic partners and financiers are warmly welcome!
Join 3,000+ delegates from 50+ countries for four days of high-impact programming in Kigali.
