SENEGAL- African heads of state, government stakeholders, and development partners will gather in Senegal for a three-day Dakar II Food summit from 25 January, with the African Development Bank Group as co-host.
The summit strategically aims to map plans to unlock Africa’s food-producing potential and position the continent to become a breadbasket of the world.
African Development Bank Group President Dr. Akinwumi A. Adesina said: “The Dakar II Summit will mobilize political commitment, development partner and private sector investment, establish much-needed policies and strategically drive actions to deliver at scale. This landmark event will be a turning point towards food sovereignty and resilience for the entire continent.”
This summit is themed Feed Africa: Food Sovereignty and Resilience. Simply explained as the improvement of Africa’s food nutrition and security; leveraging the continent’s huge agricultural resources; boosting international trade, expanding market share, and production and processing value addition.
The new summit will be held at the heart of the Bank Group’s Feed Africa: Strategy for Agricultural Transformation in Africa (2016-2025), which helped the Bank Group to promptly respond to the impact on Africa’s food security of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by launching a US$1.5-billion African Emergency Food Production Facility to support 20 million farmers to produce 38 million metric tons of food valued at $12 billion.
Within only 45 days after the launch of the US$15m African Emergency Food Production Facility, the Bank Group had approved US$1.13 billion for operations in 24 countries.
Considering that Africa is home to a third of the world’s 850 million people living with hunger, the organizers say heads of state and government will convene sessions to develop transformational country-specific food and agriculture delivery compacts.
In addition, African countries are also expected to make measurable political commitments to implement policies designed to eliminate extreme poverty, hunger, and malnutrition in Africa.
Dr. Beth Dunford, Vice President for Agriculture at the African Development Bank, noted that the country compacts will provide targeted roadmaps toward self-sufficiency and interventions that will make Africa’s agriculture sector more business-oriented and commercially viable.
She added that the Summit will be the one-stop-shop for African countries pursuing more and better investments that are public sector enabled and private sector-led.
Apart from developing transformational policies, the meeting will also showcase programs already contributing to African food sovereignty and resilience.
This includes the African Development Bank’s Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) platform, which is delivering heat-tolerant wheat, drought-tolerant maize, and high-yield rice seeds to 11 million African farmers in 21 countries.
According to Dr. Martin Fregene, Director of Agriculture and Agro-Industry at the African Development Bank, TAAT will produce 100 million metric tonnes of additional food to feed 200 million people.
He underscored agricultural technology programs like TAAT, when put on scale, do more than boost agricultural outputs in a continent that has more than 60% of the world’s remaining arable land.
It increases wealth, creates jobs, and opens markets up to regional and international trade, Dr. Fregene noted, adding that it has become critical to support these efforts.
According to Adesina, with the removal of barriers to agricultural development aided by new investments, it is estimated that Africa’s agricultural output could increase from US$280 billion per year to US$1 trillion by 2030.”
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