AGRF 2020 highlights Africa’s internal $250 billion agricultural trade opportunity

In its 10^th anniversary summit, the recent African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) 2020, which took place in Kigali, Rwanda, focused on Africa’s rapidly expanding cities and food markets. Multiple speakers talked about the current African city markets that represent a US$250 billion opportunity, a value five times bigger than our present export markets.

A video montage at the start of the opening ceremony posed a question to the forum: “How do we feed our cities with nutritious diets, with an ever-growing number of consumers, diversity of incomes, diversity in diets, and therefore diversity in demand for food?”

With the theme “Feed the cities, grow the continent,” the conference highlighted the need for a significant transformation in Africa’s food systems to achieve the continental goals laid out in the Malabo Declaration and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. With the rapidly expanding urban population set to reach a billion people by 2040, achieving this transformation is now a matter of urgency.

In her opening remarks, Dr Agnes Kalibata, President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic had challenged the continent’s food systems making it evident changes must be made to strengthen them. Despite being the fastest urbanizing continent, she pointed out some reasons hindering Africa from taking advantage of the opportunity.

“Many of those are lack of what experts call wholesale markets,” Kalibata said of the drawbacks. “Lack of those means that farmers don’t have predictability of markets. The other thing that experts talked about was the lack of competitiveness of the agricultural sector itself, as well as the lack of competitiveness of agricultural commodities,” she continued.

Rwanda’s Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources, Dr Gérardine Mukeshimana, in her welcome address, spoke of the complexity of urban food systems in producing sufficient food for the populace. With the coronavirus crisis happening when hunger on the continent was already rising, Mukeshimana expressed hope that the AGRF summit will develop implementable tools to help feed Africa sustainably.

AGRA Board Chair, His Excellency Hailemariam Desalegn, noted that after 10 years of the AGRF, “the forum is committed to taking its agenda and impact several notches higher,” to be able to achieve Africa’s food security goals.

“With five years left to achieve the vision and goals laid out in the Malibu Declaration, and 10 years left to achieve the SDGs, AGRF recognizes that it must drive a more international agenda, with more partners, because all of you can understand that we are only left with five years to achieve zero hunger in Africa,” he said.

The AGRF is the foremost forum bringing together stakeholders, including CGIAR and several multilateral organizations, to take practical actions and share lessons to improve African agriculture. Because of the COVID-19 restrictions, most of the more than 10,400 participants attended the conference virtually, making this year’s conference the largest AGRF summit so far.