"Achieving Zero-Hunger on African Continent is Possible": Global Agri Leaders Ahead of 2023 Africa Food Summit in Dakar

According to leaders in global agriculture who met in Rome, it is feasible to end hunger in Africa by 2030. Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank Group, Alvaro Lario, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and Qu Dongyu, Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said the target was attainable during a meeting before the African Food Summit (Dakar 2), which will be hosted by President Macky Sall in Dakar, Senegal, from January 25–27, 2023.

African Heads of State, Ministers of Finance and Agriculture, as well as several international development partners, will attend the high-level Dakar 2 summit, which will be co-hosted by the African Development Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Research and have as its theme "Unleashing Africa's Food Potential."

Following renewed interest in the industry on a global scale and the consequences of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which have significantly increased the cost of food production and imports, the Dakar 2 conference aims to mobilize political support for the structural transformation of agriculture in Africa. It is unacceptable, according to Adesina, that a continent with 65% of the world's most arable land and an abundance of water resources experiences food insecurity.

The summit is a crucial global initiative to proactively and methodically assist Africa in achieving Zero Hunger. "We have the technologies, platforms, and resources to change the status quo by energizing the private sector, scaling up food production for millions of African farmers, unlocking finance for farmers and agricultural SMEs, and transforming the agriculture and food value chains," the head of the bank claimed.

Alvaro Lario, the president of IFAD, congratulated the African Development Bank on its historic and largest-ever ADF16 donor replenishment and recognized the Bank Group's leadership and the two organizations' long-standing partnership. The African Development Bank Group and IFAD provide 55% of all African multi-development assistance for agriculture.

The Bank Group and IFAD will collaborate on policy frameworks and food and agriculture delivery compacts as co-conveners of the Africa Food Summit in 2023. The Dakar 2 Africa Food Summit will be built around performance-based agreements with African governments, development partners, and the private sector that achieve specific goals for food self-sufficiency. Long-term collaborations and shared resources with the African Development Bank Group, according to FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu, will help leverage and spur agricultural projects across the continent.

In a complementary, practical, and goal-oriented manner, we must collaborate on the entire agricultural value chain of food production, food processing, and food marketing. The ultimate goal is to ensure food security, he said. The African Development Bank Group and FAO have recently worked together on projects in Tanzania and Equatorial Guinea as well as the technical development of blue economy programmes in Cabo Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, and Morocco.

They have also conducted multi-stakeholder dialogues on the Bank's Desert to Power and Great Green Wall initiatives. The January 2023 Africa Food Summit will also emphasise enhancing smallholder farmers' and SMEs' access to technology and financing, boosting productivity, and developing infrastructure in the areas of infrastructure development, storage, electricity, logistics, and transportation.