As social entrepreneurs, philanthropic leaders, impact investors, and policy influencers convene at the Skoll World Forum, an annual platform dedicated to advancing systems-level solutions and scaling impact, this year’s focus on moving from ambition to results brings a critical question into perspective for Africa: why does strong policy ambition so often fail to translate into outcomes at scale?

Africa has never lacked ambition for its food systems. What it lacks is sufficient food systems leadership capacity to turn that ambition into results. The Kampala Declaration, which took effect in January 2026, sets the agenda for the next decade, calling for inclusive, resilient, and sustainable agri-food systems across the continent. However, the African Union’s own Biennial Reviews of the just-concluded Malabo CAADP decade show that most countries were off track on the commitments they had already made, despite strong frameworks and political declarations.

Across Africa, ambitious strategies often stall at the point of execution. Coordination breaks down across ministries. System actors operate in parallel rather than in concert. Promising innovations fail to scale because few actors seek to bridge policy, markets, and communities. Implementation gaps are often attributed to constraints such as a lack of financing, weak infrastructure, or market dynamics. But unlocking these complex areas depends on the ability of leaders across diverse organisations to see the bigger shared picture, align goals, collaborate, and advance delivery in a coherent fashion.

Food systems leadership isn’t about titles or personal power. It’s about leaders in the ecosystem working across boundaries to coalesce around a common agenda, manage tough trade-offs, and push for collective action. Leadership programmes such as AGRA’s Centre for African Leaders in Agriculture (CALA), the African Food Fellowship (AFF) help strengthen these capabilities: enabling leaders to move beyond their own mandates, connect diverse actors, build coalitions, and turn big ambitions into real, measurable change. Where stronger food systems leadership exists, policies become impactful programmes, finance flows more effectively, and innovations scale. Where it does not, even substantial investments underperform.

Proof already exists – Africa can build transformational capabilities by design

Evidence increasingly points to one missing piece: a critical mass of leaders equipped to work systemically, bridging institutions, wiring stronger connections across the public, private, and civic sectors, and operating at all levels of governance. Across initiatives such as the AFF, CALA, the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD), and the Africa Capacity Building Foundation, leaders are being equipped with systems thinking, collaborative skills, implementation networks, and real-world delivery capacity grounded in country priorities. Leaders from these programmes are already demonstrating measurable results in strengthening delivery, influencing policy, and unlocking investment.

In Tanzania, embedding food systems leadership within delivery systems produced transformative results. A CALA-supported intervention reduced poultry mortality from 55% to 3% by organizing previously fragmented producers, input suppliers, and extension actors into a coordinated cluster production model that aligned incentives and improved adherence to best practices. This approach improved coordination and execution, leveraging productivity gains that had eluded the sector for years. The success of this approach led to the team’s integration into national poultry sector reforms, now advancing through the Poultry Compact (2024–2028).

In Kenya, similar leadership capabilities are translating into large-scale economic outcomes. Through the African Food Fellowship, an aquaculture enterprise has mobilized partnerships across government, finance, and industry to unlock a long-standing financing gap in the sector. AFF fellows worked with financial institutions to de-risk lending and coordinated actors across the aquaculture value chain. This led to the launch of Africa’s first dedicated aquaculture credit product and catalysed production expected to reach 25,000 MT annually by 2031, alongside 8,000 jobs and improved incomes for 10,000 smallholder farmers. In both cases, the real breakthrough wasn’t just new technology or more funding; it was about bringing people together, aligning their interests, and driving collective action across the whole system.

Critically, the impact of these initiatives extends beyond individual leaders. When leaders are connected across countries and sectors, they form an organic movement for transformation. They share insights, coordinate action, and hold one another accountable. The goal, therefore, is not just to train individuals but to forge a collective force of diverse leaders across the continent, capable of shifting policies, business models, and incentives at every level.

The return on investment Africa can’t ignore: Food systems leadership

Yet leadership remains among the least-funded components of food systems transformation. Estimates suggest that equipping 25,000 cross-sector food systems leaders across Africa over the Kampala Decade would require a modest US$25 million per year, roughly 0.1% of annual spending in Africa’s agrifood sector and just 0.25% of the total investment needed to achieve CAADP goals.

Stronger leadership capacity attracts substantial commercial finance ready to invest in Africa’s agrifood sectors and achieve greater impact by improving coordination, accountability, and execution. Food systems leadership, therefore, is not an additional cost but a multiplier that determines whether existing investments translate into results at scale.

To accelerate transformation delivery, food systems leadership initiatives are forming a community of practice to learn from one another, spotlight delivery gaps, connect their alumni networks, and collectively advocate for investment in leadership. This is a coordinated call to action, ready to scale what is already working to build a new generation of food system leaders.

Delivering on ambition: What it will take

As the Kampala decade gets underway, the question is no longer whether Africa has the right ambitions for food systems transformation, but whether it has the leadership capabilities to achieve them.

This necessitates elevating food systems leadership to the pedestal of implementation and giving it top priority and funding from governments. Development partners must also go beyond technical fixes and invest in the institutional and leadership capacity that turns commitments into real, measurable outcomes. Ecosystem actors must transition from dispersed efforts to coordinated action to deepen collaboration, align around common priorities, and advance food systems leadership capacity at scale. The next step is to translate this momentum into actionable commitments at the 2026 Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali.

Without this shift, ambition will continue to outpace execution. With it, Africa has a genuine chance to turn a decade of commitments into a decade of delivering food systems transformation.

By Alice Ruhweza, AGRA President, Debisi Araba, Managing Director – AKADEMIYA 2063 and Pascal Murasira, Executive Director at the African Food Fellowship.

The pressure is building across African food systems as fertiliser costs remain volatile, development finance for agriculture declines, and climate shocks hit farming communities faster than policy cycles can respond. These pressures are real, and they are felt most acutely by the smallholder farmers whose livelihoods depend on systems that were already under strain.

It is against this backdrop that AGRA turns twenty.

A milestone like this invites the question of what an organisation has learned. I have spent much of this past year in conversation with the people closest to the work: permanent secretaries, women leaders in finance and agribusiness, farmer organisations, technical partners, and government teams implementing national strategies. In Lusaka, a room of eighteen women from banking, media, and civil society challenged us directly on whether AGRA can bring the right instruments to the table, or whether we remain more comfortable convening than co-building. In Limuru, senior officials from fourteen African countries sat together and spoke candidly about what is working in delivery and what remains stuck.

What I heard, again and again, is that the work of agricultural transformation is slower and more interconnected than any single intervention can address. Soil health matters, but so does the policy environment that shapes what a farmer can afford to put into the ground. Market access matters, but only if the roads, storage, and trade rules connect production zones to the people who need food. Extension services matter, but they must be backed by data that reflects what is actually happening on farms. Each of these elements depends on the others. When one breaks down, the whole chain feels it.

At AGRA, for over twenty years, we have learned that distributing seeds and fertiliser, while necessary, was never going to be sufficient on its own. The harder, longer work is in building systems that hold together under pressure: linking climate adaptation to market development, connecting public investment to private sector participation, and helping governments strengthen the institutions that turn strategies into results.

And governments are at the centre of this. Every country I have engaged with in this role has its own priorities, its own constraints, its own politics. What works in Sierra Leone’s Feed Salone program looks different from Ethiopia’s cluster-based approach or Nigeria’s domestic rice strategy. AGRA’s job is to walk alongside these efforts, to bring technical support, data, and convening power where they are needed, and to stay close enough to the ground that we can learn from what countries are doing.

Twenty have taught us something fundamental; agri-food systems transformation touches every part of a country’s economy: finance, trade, infrastructure, research, and policy. Someone has to sit in the middle of that and help the pieces connect. Someone has to hold the space where governments learn from each other, where private capital meets public strategy, where data reaches the people making decisions, and where smallholder farmers remain at the centre of it all. It is a role the sector cannot afford to leave unfulfilled. It is what twenty years of learning and course correction have shaped AGRA to do. We keep going because the underlying truth has not changed: when farmers prosper, Africa prospers.

By Alice Ruhweza – President, AGRA

Africa stands at a decisive moment for its food and water future. Across the continent, farmers are facing longer dry spells, erratic rainfall, and intensifying climate shocks.

When rains fail, crops fail. When crops fail, livelihoods are threatened. Recent droughts in the Horn of Africa and southern Africa show just how exposed our food systems are.

Between 2020 and 2023, the Horn of Africa experienced one of the most severe droughts in recent history, displacing millions and jeopardising livelihoods in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia.

Similarly, the 2023-2024 drought in Zambia revealed how limited water storage and weak climate information services intensify vulnerability and undermine effective response. These crises remind us of a fundamental truth: Africa’s food security is inseparable from water security.

Yet the question before us is not only how much water Africa has. It is how reliably farmers can access and manage it.

Today, most of Sub-Saharan Africa remains dependent on rain-fed agriculture. Only about 6 to 7 per cent of cultivated land is irrigated, compared to more than a third in Asia.

Closing this gap is not simply about large infrastructure. It is about enabling farmers with practical, climate-smart technologies that are viable at scale and sustainable over time.

Across multiple countries, we have seen that when farming systems reach a critical economic threshold, around 1,500 farmers connected to functioning markets, technology adoption becomes feasible and transformative.

At that scale, irrigation, solar pumping, small-scale water storage, and improved climate information services shift from isolated interventions to system change. Productivity rises. Risk declines. Investment follows. This is the shift Africa must accelerate.

Reliable irrigation systems, including drip and sprinkler technologies, stabilise production and allow farmers to diversify. A major constraint on irrigation expansion is the high cost and unreliability of water lifting.

Diesel pumps remain expensive, and grid electricity is often inaccessible in rural regions. Solar-powered irrigation offers a transformative alternative: it is clean, affordable, and enables farmers to access water year-round from rivers, lakes, or groundwater.

Scaling solar irrigation, in combination with rainwater harvesting and groundwater management, provides a resilient, integrated water system capable of sustaining communities amid climate uncertainty. The rapid growth of solar-powered irrigation across Africa is already helping farmers lower production costs and improve water-use efficiency.

These solutions empower farmers directly. They improve water productivity, reduce vulnerability to climate shocks, and create the foundation for stronger markets and more resilient value chains.

Improved water management at farm and community level strengthens food systems more equitably and sustainably than large capital projects alone. It builds resilience from the ground up and contributes meaningfully to national food sufficiency goals.

It also opens pathways for youth employment and women’s economic participation by lowering entry barriers and strengthening local enterprise ecosystems. Africa holds significant groundwater potential.

Unlocking it responsibly, through managed aquifer recharge, shallow wells, and extraction, can provide critical buffers during drought. The priority must be long-term stewardship alongside expanded access.

The AU has consistently placed water security at the center of agricultural transformation and climate adaptation.

As we advance continental frameworks and strengthen policy coherence, our focus must remain on enabling practical solutions that reach farmers at scale.

Africa must accelerate investment in climate-smart water technologies that are financially viable, inclusive, and market-linked. Public policy should prioritise enabling environments affordable finance, targeted incentives for efficient systems, climate information services, and strengthened value chains.

Singapore – 25^th September 2025 – Olam Agri, a leading global agribusiness in food, feed and fibre, and AGRA, Africa’s leading partnership-driven institution for agricultural transformation, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) intended to scale up sustainable food and feed value chains in Nigeria and Ghana, with future expansion across Africa. This MoU marks a crucial outcome from the Africa Food Systems Forum, 2025 hosted in Senegal, recently.

The collaboration will combine Olam Agri’s deep market presence and direct engagement with smallholder farmers and consumers with AGRA’s expertise in building inclusive, market-driven agrifood systems that improve food security, resilience, and livelihoods for smallholder farmers across the continent.

Under the agreement, the two organisations aim to collaborate to:

• Scale smallholder farmer programmes in soy, wheat, maize, and rice in Nigeria.
• Expand programmes for poultry and aquaculture farmers and scale baker initiatives in Nigeria and Ghana to improve food safety, nutrition, and profitability.

This proposed new collaboration aims at promoting inclusive and climate-smart agriculture, empower women and youth with new opportunities, strengthen market access and sustainability practices, and support smallholder farmers and SMEs through training, technology, and financial linkages, thereby enhancing their productivity, income, and resilience to market fluctuations. This MoU builds upon successful cooperation between the two organisations since 2021 in the rice value chain, where it supported over 5,000 smallholder farmers in the Niger state of Nigeria.

Since 2023, AGRA has been designing and implementing the “New AGRA Strategy 3.0”, that focuses on transforming African food systems through key areas like seed systems development, strengthening inclusive markets and trade, and improving government engagement. AGRA will draw on its inclusive market systems approach, identifying local partners and aligning with country strategies to build resilient agricultural and food systems. Olam Agri will leverage its market access, technical expertise, and digital tools for ground-level sustainability data, supply chain transparency, and supplier/ customer management to enhance productivity, traceability, and sustainability across the value chain. Olam Agri and AGRA have initiated discussions and working groups to identify priorities for implementation across each of the value chains in both Nigeria and Ghana.

Mr. Saurabh Mehra, MD & Global Head, Food and Feed Processing and Value-Added Segment at Olam Agri, said, “Through this partnership, we will scale our sustainability projects with farmers and bakers in Nigeria and Ghana. As a leader in the food and feed value chain, we see this collaboration as strengthening our engagement and support for farmers and bakers to empower more local talent, strengthen food systems, and advance food security.”

“By combining AGRA’s catalytic capabilities and commitment to inclusive market systems with Olam Agri’s market access and technology, this partnership empowers African smallholder farmers and communities to thrive, ensuring fair opportunities, better livelihoods, dignified jobs for youth and a stronger, more resilient food system”, added Ms. Alice Ruhweza, AGRA President.

Dr. Shailendra Mishra, Global Head of Sustainability, Food and Feed, Olam Agri, added, “This partnership is a milestone in demonstrating impact across the full food and feed value chain. Together with AGRA, we will scale regenerative farming, enhance soil health, biodiversity, and climate resilience, while improving farmer livelihoods and consumer nutrition. By joining forces, we can work towards a stronger, more resilient, and inclusive food system for Africa”.

About Olam Agri

Olam Agri is a market leading, differentiated food, feed and fibre agri-business with a global origination footprint, processing capabilities and deep understanding of market needs built over 35 years. With a strong presence in high-growth emerging markets and products across grains & oilseeds, wheat milling & pasta, rice, edible oils, specialty grains & seeds, animal feed & protein, cotton, wood products, rubber, sugar & bioenergy and risk management solutions, Olam Agri is at the heart of global food and agri-trade flows with 45.1 million MT in volume handled in 2024. Focused on transforming food, feed and fibre for a more sustainable future, it aims at creating value for customers, enable farming communities to prosper sustainably and strive for a food-secure future. Olam Agri Holdings Limited, which holds the Olam Agri business, is a 64.6% owned subsidiary of Olam Group. 35.4% of Olam Agri Holdings is owned by SALIC International Investment Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Olam Agri’s strategic partner The Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Company. For more information and to subscribe to our news alerts, please visit https://www.olamagri.com/.

About Olam Group

Olam Group is a leading food and agri-business supplying food, ingredients, feed and fibre to 22,000 customers worldwide. Our value chain spans over 60 countries and includes farming, processing and distribution operations, as well as a global network of farmers. Through our purpose to ‘Re-imagine Global Agriculture and Food Systems’, Olam Group aims to address the many challenges involved in meeting the needs of a growing global population, while achieving positive impact for farming communities, our planet and all our stakeholders. Headquartered and listed in Singapore, Olam Group currently ranks among the top 30 largest primary listed companies in terms of market capitalisation on SGX-ST. Since June 2020, Olam Group has been included in the FTSE4Good Index Series, a global sustainable investment index series developed by FTSE Russell, following a rigorous assessment of Olam’s supply chain activities, impact on the environment and governance transparency. More information on Olam can be found at www.olamgroup.com.

 
Media contact
Name: Johahn Bhurrut

T: +65 9101 0955
E: johahn.bhurrut@olamagri.com

Name: Stephanny Ngooi
T: +65 8938 1270
E: stephanny.ngooi@olamagri.com

About AGRA:

AGRA is a proudly African-led institution focused on scaling agricultural innovations that help smallholder farmers towards increased incomes, better livelihoods, and improved food security. Since 2006, AGRA has worked with its partners, governments, non-governmental organizations, private sector businesses, and more; to deliver a set of proven solutions to smallholder farmers and indigenous African agricultural enterprises. AGRA catalyzes and sustains an inclusive agricultural transformation aimed at increasing incomes and enhancing food security in 12 countries. For more information, visit agra.org

 Media contact

Name: Humphrey Chola

T: +25478981221

E: HChola@agra.org

By Alice Ruhweza

I am back in Nairobi after spending a week at the Africa Food Systems Forum (AFSF) in Dakar.  I can still feel Dakar’s soundtrack humming in my ears. Part Afrobeats, part market-day hustle, part start-up pitches. This year’s AFSF wasn’t your run-of-the-mill conference; it was a live studio session where farmers, scientists, bankers, youths, and ministers laid down tracks together. And the title of the soundtrack is “agriculture is not a solitary struggle. It is a thriving, modern business with real deal flow, real technology, real jobs, and real joy.”

You could feel the joy in the Youth Dome, which fizzed like a tech festival with demo pods, rapid-fire pitches, mentorship corners, and that buzzing optimism one only gets when young people believe the future is in their hands. These young people were not just talking apps; they were building businesses from climate-smart farming to digital finance to AI tools that answer farmers’ questions in their own languages. This last one really stayed with me: a farmer snaps a photo, records a voice note, and gets advice back in Wolof. (One of the main local languages in Senegal). This is what dignity looks like in digital form. Technology that meets people where they are and lifts them up.

This year the exhibition floor gave livestock its proper spotlight. From fodder to dairy to poultry and beef, and some very colorful birds, the conversations the booths, and one very powerful all-female panel put livestock at the center of value chains that feed families, power small industries, and open export markets. When Uganda talked beef and dairy, Somalia put fodder on the table, and Ghana ran the numbers on poultry, one could see how farmers move from surviving to thriving when the entire value chain is connected.

And because business needs capital, countries put on their best suits on and went to the “Deal Room”. Senegal, Liberia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Somalia pitched investment-ready ventures collectively aiming to mobilize investments in agrifood systems worth over USD $6 billion. This is not wishful thinking; this is pipeline. Investors are always looking for bankable and scalable projects and they saw both.

Which brings me to a theme I care about deeply: insurance for women-led businesses. Missing rains, droughts, floods, price shocks, illness, one bad week can undo a year’s work.  One of the most exciting panels I attended was the one convened by AGRA to discuss women and finance. The panelists made a strong case for providing insurance to financial institutions so that they can be incentivized to lend to women owned businesses. The financing gap is still huge, around USD10 billion by recent estimates, but countries from Senegal to Ethiopia are proving that smart public policy can unlock private insurance cover and make credit cheaper and accessible down the line. Technical assistance for women-led SMEs was also a key topic of discussion. Suffice to say that these businesses must be supported to be investor-ready, including having proper records that would help them attract the kind of patient capital needed to get them to scale.

AGRA launched the Africa Food Systems Report 2025, an evolution of the long-running Africa Agriculture Status Report. Under the theme “Drivers of Change and Innovation for Food Systems in Africa”, the report marks a shift from tracking agriculture alone to taking stock of the entire food system, from production and trade to governance, nutrition, climate, and markets. The picture remains uneven, with hunger continuing to rise. The report argues that the future hinges on how countries harness innovation and change drivers, from smarter spatial planning and blended finance to stronger institutions and inclusive governance. It gives examples of how local processing can turn harvest surpluses into jobs and increased incomes, how trade corridors can connect food baskets across the continent, and how nutrition, climate resilience, and markets are inseparable in building food security. Finally, it argues, persuasively, that siloed solutions won’t cut it anymore. We need integrated approaches, backed by finance, to scale what works.

The forum was not just about events and networking. We also recognised innovators who are driving agrifood system transformation in Africa.

The Women Agripreneurs of the Year Award (WAYA) Grand Prize went to Mathildah Amollo of Kenya, whose company, Greatlakes Feeds Ltd, is rewriting the story of livestock nutrition. She was joined by a constellation of excellent innovators in their own right: Juliet Kakwerre Tumusiime (Uganda), Julienne Olawolé Agossadou (Benin), Roberta Edu-Oyedokun (Nigeria), Joyce Waithira Rugano (Kenya), and Onicca Sibanyona (South Africa), each of them proof that women’s innovation is rewriting Africa’s food future.

The Africa Food Prize (AFP), the continent’s preeminent recognition of individuals or institutions that are reshaping Africa’s food systems, was awarded to two remarkable scientists whose work is both a cultural correction and a scientific breakthrough. Professor Mary Abukutsa-Onyango from Kenya was recognized for her advocacy for indigenous crops and improved nutrition, while Dr. Mercy Diebiru-Ojo from Nigeria received recognition for her work on accelerating the production of disease-free planting materials for cassava and yam.

Significantly, there were concrete signals for investors. The UK announced a GBP 5 million partnership with AGRA to strengthen intra-Africa trade, a nod to the opportunity that sits in our fields and factories if we can connect them to global markets.

AGRA unveiled a package of partnerships designed to unlock private capital including Africa100,  a catalytic initiative launched in partnership with the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF), to catalyse support to the top 100 often-overlooked small and medium sized enterprises, (the “hidden middle”), that link farmers to markets, create rural jobs, and drive resilience. Other partnerships announced include the Southern Africa Poultry Initiative – transforming Poultry for Nutrition and Jobs, Poultry Feed Innovation Grand Challenge; and platforms intended to elevate the voices of Africa’s youth, partnerships with Global Citizen and Farm Radio, and the inaugural Africa Media Fellowship Award, intended to nurture the next generation of storytellers.

None of this happens at scale without policy to match the endeavor. That is why my call to action is for Governments, Private sector, Development Partners and all key stakeholders to double down on domesticating the CAADP Kampala Declaration; and putting in place the capacity, institutions and finance to achieve the CAADP targets which include: mobilizing USD100 billion, increasing agrifood output by 45 percent, cutting post-harvest losses in half, and tripling intra-African agri-trade by 2035. AGRA will continue to catalyse, facilitate, orchestrate and galvanise the entire ecosystem to work with Governments to translate these targets into bankable projects that deliver impact for small holder farmers from farm gate, to border post.

A big shout out to the hosts. Senegal rolled out their renowned “Teranga hospitality” with a side of grit. Honorable Mabouba Diagne, Senegal’s Minister of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Livestock took up office in February close to the same time I was joining AGRA as President. He and I made a silent pact that this AFSF would be our joint delivery. His team and the AFSF Secretariat put in 17-hour days to make sure this happened. That energy mirrored the whole week: roughly 5,600 participants from 106 countries, 149 exhibitors all pulling in the same direction. When a country works that hard to convene the continent, you leave with more than contacts; you leave with conviction.

The forum closed with a line I loved from Minister Diagne: he said the two accelerators for Africa are youth and technology. He is right. I would add a third accelerator that we saw everywhere in Dakar: belief. Belief that our food systems can feed, employ, and enrich; belief that a farmer’s photo and voice note can summon world-class agronomy advice; belief that women enterprises deserve to be insured and indemnified from risks; and belief that policy can keep pace with the hustle on our streets.

Youth aren’t waiting to be invited; they are building. Women aren’t asking for permission; they’re winning awards, running enterprises. Governments aren’t just issuing communiqués; they are pitching to investors and some are putting real money into biofortified school meals that not only boost attendance but also improve nutrition. This is what it looks like when agriculture stops being treated as charity and shows up on the balance sheet as a business.

Now, our task is to keep composing the track we started in Dakar, tighten the rhythm of policy, turn up the volume on investment, and let youth and women carry the chorus. If we do this, agriculture will not only feed Africa. It will power the world.

By Alice Ruhweza, AGRA President, and Boaz B. Keizire, Director, Policy & State Capability

In the heart of Brasilia, during the recent II Brazil-Africa Dialogue on Food Security, we stood at a pivotal moment in the global fight against hunger and poverty. This gathering brought together 44 African ministers and leaders from international organizations, underscoring a shared commitment to transforming food systems across the continent.

The dialogue was not just a meeting; it was a call to action. As Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stated, “Africa is part of Brazil, and Brazil is part of Africa.” This sentiment reflects a profound historical connection and the potential for collaboration in addressing one of the most pressing challenges of our time—food and nutrition insecurity.

Our journey revealed compelling Brazilian models in agriculture where innovative practices have transformed semi-arid regions into thriving agricultural hubs. The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA) showcased its pioneering work in sustainable agriculture, emphasizing the importance of science, technology, and knowledge transfer. Initiatives like the School Meals Program, which feeds 40 million children while supporting local farmers, exemplify how Brazil integrates food security with local agricultural production.

We also explored the transformative impact of advanced irrigation technologies and drought-resilient solutions in areas like Petrolina. The AgroBrasília Fair further showcased cutting-edge advancements, including AI-driven farm mechanization and livestock breeding. These experiences serve as a blueprint for African nations striving to enhance agricultural productivity while highlighting the critical role of national agricultural organizations.

As we engage with policymakers and civil society, it is crucial to amplify the voices of those often overlooked in this discourse. Farmers, community leaders, and local organizations must be at the forefront of the conversation about food systems transformation. Their insights are invaluable in shaping effective and inclusive policies, particularly for youth and women.

The Kampala Declaration on the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) calls for a robust commitment to agricultural transformation, aiming for a 45% increase in food production by 2035. However, we face significant challenges, particularly in increasing research and development funding. Current data reveals that technology adoption among smallholder farmers remains below 30%, primarily due to asset poverty and limited access to resources. This critical barrier can be addressed by embracing Brazilian models that empower farmers and enhance sustainable productivity.

Key Priorities for AGRA and Partners

Bridging the Asset Trap for Smallholder Farmers: We must implement programs that enable farmers to achieve at least three metric tons per hectare. By providing access to improved seeds, fertilizers, and training on best practices, we can help farmers increase their productivity and income, allowing them to invest further in their operations.

Enabling Private Sector Participation: Policies should be established that encourage private sector involvement in delivering sustainable and affordable services to farmers. This includes investment in agricultural technology, logistics, and market access, transforming farming into a viable business and enhancing the efficiency of agricultural practices.

Collaborating with Universities for Practical Knowledge: We must challenge universities to partner with the agricultural sector and train students in practical skills that translate into profits and planetary protection. By integrating hands-on training with academic learning, we can prepare graduates to contribute effectively to sustainable agricultural practices.

As we move towards the G20 Presidency in South Africa, we have a unique opportunity to elevate the conversation around food systems transformation and drive actionable change. We invite all stakeholders—governments, civil society, private sector actors, and individuals—to join us in this critical mission. By leveraging AGRA’s agri-business consortia approach, we can scale successful models that integrate public and private sector ecosystems, fostering innovation and sustainable practices.

Let us remember that the fight against hunger and malnutrition is not just a policy issue; it is a moral imperative. The time to act is now, and decisive action is essential for creating a more sustainable and equitable food future. Through strategic partnerships, shared knowledge, and bold actions, we can create a future where every child is nourished, every farmer empowered, and every nation resilient.