Government ministers, development partners, and private-sector leaders gathered in Kigali on 2 September to take stock of the African Development Bank Group's African Emergency Food Production Facility across 34 countries and to discuss the initiative's next steps.
The $1.5 billion facility, approved in May 2022, financed delivery of fast, practical agricultural support including climate-smart seeds and fertilizers to some 20 million smallholder farmers across Africa to prevent immediate food shortages.
The session, From emergency responses to food system resilience: lessons learnt from the African Emergency Food Production Facility for the next generation of agricultural investment in Africa, took place during the Africa Food Systems Forum, which the Bank Group hosted in Kigali. The session offered government leaders and other speakers an opportunity to share experiences and expertise from their respective countries.
In a keynote address, Nigeria's Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Abubakar Kyari, said that different emergencies in recent years had exposed Africa's deep structural weaknesses.
"A food system that depends on emergency interventions cannot yet be considered resilient," he said. He added that diversifying food and input sources, building a financing architecture blending public, concessional and private capital, and managing strategic food reserves transparently are keyways for food systems to become more resilient," Kyari said.
Bernard Kini Comoé, Minister Delegate in charge of Food Crop Production in Côte d'Ivoire's Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development and Food Production, credited the Bank and Japan International Cooperation Agency for co-financing a project that improved farmer access to fertiliser and better seeds, thereby boosting yields of cassava, maize and rice.
Emmanuel Mbetide Bessane, Central African Republic Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, said a $5.4 million dollars Bank-financed project that increased production and productivity of cassava, maize and rice while strengthening national research capacity.
The vice president of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Seisuke Inoue, urged that food system preparedness be treated as an investment in a public good. He pointed to irrigation, extension services and partnerships such as the Coalition for African Rice Development as examples of investments that have produced economic dividends.
The event also featured a presentation of the African Emergency Food Production Facility's results. Dr Innocent Musabyimana, Bank Group Chief Agricultural Technologies Officer, said the Facility had reached nearly 15 million farmers across 34 countries and helped produce an additional 45 million metric tons of food. It also delivered more than 400,000 metric tons of certified seed and nearly 3 million metric tons of fertiliser, while mobilising about USD 300 million from partners including JICA, and the governments of Norway, the Netherlands and Germany.
The next challenge, he said, is to turn these gains into longer-term fixes for seed systems, fertiliser access and markets.
Dr Martin Fregene, Officer in Charge of the Bank's Agriculture, Human and Social Development Vice Presidency, highlighted specific successes of the Facility. These include Nigeria, which achieved a four-fold increase in wheat production, and Côte d'Ivoire, where maize output was doubled. Fregene warned that emergency funding tools would not be enough for a continent projected to reach 2.5 billion by 2050.
"There has to be market driven sustainable business, a way to ensure inputs get to farmers and the outputs reach consumers in time," Fregene noted. As part of the solution, he stressed reliable access to credit, insurance, inputs such as fertilizer, and marketplaces where farmers can sell their yields.
Dr Simeon Ehui, Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture based in Nigeria, called on leaders, researchers, and farmers to focus on creating technologies that can easily be distributed to wider food systems to better feed communities.
Everlyn Musyoka, Strategy Lead Africa for smallholder business of Bayer Crop Science, a private chemical manufacturing company, called for stronger digital infrastructure, youth-focused policy, and deeper public-private partnerships.
In closing remarks, Moses Vilakati, African Union Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Environment recommended aligning the timing of emergency financing with the agricultural calendar, scaling the deployment of technology, and ensuring that emergency responses serve to reinforce national systems rather than circumvent them. He also called for deepening strategic partnerships and increasing investment in preparedness measures in advance of future shocks.
Delegates can move "from lessons learned to systems that are strengthened, from successful interventions to investment at scale, and from emergency response to lasting resilience," Vilakati said.
More about the Africa Emergency Food Production Facility: https://www.afdb.org/en/topics-and-sectors/initiatives-partnerships/african-emergency-food-production-facility
