Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire — The African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are pleased to invite you to the High Level Ministerial Dialogue and Flagship Launch of Post-Harvest Losses and Agro-Processing (PHAP), which will take place on 21 and 22 November 2017 at the Bank's HQ Auditorium.

The specific objectives of the workshop include:

Establish responsive advocacy in the regional countries with the strategic directions of the Bank in policy formulation and institutional strengthening

Coordination among relevant public sector agencies and their linkages to the private sector and other partners.

Develop Pro-active strategy on optimizing value chains for post-harvest loss reduction including country agriculture policy assessments that prioritize post-harvest loss reduction leveraging on Leadership 4 Agriculture Platform (L4Ag) supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and other partners, which would serve as a forum for dialogue, advocacy and policy formulation to tackle current and emerging post-harvest challenges in Africa.

Take bold actions in discussing the key enablers for the establishment of agro-processing and storage facilities including capturing maximum value in down-stream agro-processing to move Africa up in the global value chains.

Engage directly with key stakeholders that will be involved in scaling up financing to agriculture on the continent.

Lesson sharing from innovative approaches and best practice models including lessons learnt from previous post-harvest losses Reduction (PHLP) conference in Nairobi, lessons from governments' strategies, financial institutions, agribusiness companies, producers, and commodity traders, among others.

The event will bring together about 150 participants from Africa's public and private sectors. These include a number of Ministers of Agriculture, academics, researchers, youth delegates and scholars.