Africa Common Position to the UNFSS at the Ethiopia One
CGIAR Launch
Dr. Godfrey Bahiigwa
Director of Agriculture and Rural Development
African Union Commission
One CGIAR consultation workshop and Launch event
ILRI, Addis Ababa, 29-30 March 2023

1. Overview of Africa’s Food Systems
2. Drivers of transformation and levers of change in Africa’s
food systems
3. Africa’s game-changing solutions
4. Post Summit Rollout Plan
Presentation Outline

1. Overview of Africa’s Food Systems
i. State of food and nutrition security in Africa
 evolving towards intensified production-driven systems
 shaped by key megatrends including: i) the rise in middle class; ii) rapid
urbanization; iii) climate change, and more recently the COVID-19 pandemic
 declining per capita food production
 Even with emerging large (global) food retailers, SMEs (many of them Women and
largely informal) remain significant player and driver of Africa’s food systems
[production; processing; retailing/vending]
 Negative trends in hunger and malnutrition in the 2014-2018 period
i. Africa’s one trillion-dollar business is in agriculture and
agribusiness
ii. Resilience in Africa’s food systems
 Resilience in the light of environmental and climate change interfaces (adaptation;
mitigation)
 Socio-economic resilience – in the face of socio-economic shocks

2. Drivers of transformation and levers of change in Africa’s food systems
i. Sustained, broad-based economic recovery
i. Emerging medium- and large-scale farmers
ii. Rapid urbanization and growth of rural towns
iii. Globalization, food trade, and changing diets
iv. Rise of the staples processing sector
v. Rising demand for animal source foods

3: Africa’s game-changing solutions – 1/6
Ensuring access to safe and nutritious food for all:
1. Promote biofortification of staple foods & industrial fortification of complementary foods
2. Facilitate the expansion of cash transfer programs to families to access food
3. Promote and enforce food safety standards in formal and informal food markets
4. Expand school feeding programs to improved nutrition for school children and create market for
locally produced foods
5. Design and implement Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) campaigns &
nutrition education
6. Adopt and implement coherent evidence-based nutritious food policies and strategies along with
enhanced institutional capacities and capabilities
7. Adopt policy and fiscal measures across ministries to support food affordability
8. Promote diet diversification, including nutritious traditional and indigenous foods
9. Set up a financing facility for food and nutrition security in Africa
10. Promote national, regional and continental food information systems
11. Establish national and regional food reserves and operationalize food trade corridors

3. Africa’s game-changing solutions – 2/6
Shifting to sustainable consumption patterns
1. Promote and support the production and consumption of traditional and
indigenous foods
2. Establish and expand modernized food markets to become accessible to both
vendors and consumers
3. Promote responsible agri-processing to produce healthy foods for consumers
4. Promote consumption of blue foods from Africa’s aquatic resources
5. Expand intra-African trade in food through the Africa Continental Free Trade Area
(AfCFTA)
6. Revive, support and modernize local markets and concurrently support food chains
to promote standardized production chains and supermarkets

3. Africa’s game-changing solutions – 3/6
Boosting nature-positive production at sufficient scale
1. Enhance access to productivity enhancing technologies, including improved seeds and
animal breeds, fertilizer and biotechnology
2. Promote measures and practices for sustainable soil and water management, including
irrigation, watershed management and renewable energy
3. Adopt policies and practices to reduce the carbon footprint, e.g. reducing emissions and
post-harvest losses, and increasing carbon capture
4. Support adoption of policies to drive the adoption of climate smart agriculture practices
5. Invest in agricultural research and development to develop innovations for sustainable
agricultural intensification
6. Promote intra-Africa trade by fostering the adoption of national AfCFTA strategies
7. Promote digitalization in agriculture to reduce transaction costs, connect markets and
improve decision making
8. Increase agricultural financing to meet the CAADP target of 10 percent of annual public
expenditure
9. Support implementation of Africa’s Blue Economy Strategy and other maritime conventions

3. Africa’s game-changing solutions – 4/6
Advancing equitable livelihoods and value distribution
1. Empower women through greater access to productive resources (land, water,
energy)
2. Enhance women’s income opportunities to improve welfare of children and
food and nutrition security
3. Adopt policies and make investments to develop SMEs in agribusiness
including providing training and financing
4. Build capacities of Member States to promote policy, legal and institutional
reforms
5. Develop and promote competitive and inclusive food value chains
6. Encourage the establishment of cooperatives at all segments of food value
chains
7. Facilitate smallholder farmer and Agri-SMEs access to food markets.
8. Empower local communities to develop inclusive and sustainable food systems

3. Africa’s game-changing solutions – 5/6
Building resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stress
1. Design or adopt targeted social safety net programs to enhance household and
community resilience
2. Promote production and consumption of nutrition traditional and indigenous
foods
3. Invest in climate data and knowledge systems & in early warning systems for
food security and climate-related disasters
4. Leverage regional actions for building resilience of small-scale agricultural
producers
5. Encourage partnerships and investments to overcome water scarcity on the
continent
6. Promote investment in risk insurance such as weather-indexed crop and
livestock insurance schemes

3. Africa’s game-changing solutions – 6/6
Cross-cutting game-changing solutions:
1. Strengthen integrated policy making, inter-ministerial collaboration and multi-stakeholder coordination
2. Enhance continental accountability for food systems transformation through the CAADP biennial review
mechanism and joint sector reviews
3. Empower citizens to participate in local program design and accountability platforms
4. Mobilize global, continental and national political leadership and institutional support to commitments for
food systems transformation
5. Empower local governments and community leadership in food systems transformation
6. Provide policy and incentives for domestic private sector growth and investments
7. Develop and implement land tenure reform policies and legislation
8. Invest in digitalization infrastructure and capacity building
9. Engage the youth meaningfully in food system transformation
10. Encourage public investments in cold chains to reduce food losses
11. Support regional integration through joint planning, joint research, policy harmonization and capacity
building

Section 4: Post Summit Rollout Plan
i. Domestication of the pathways in the Africa Common Position into
sectoral plans (national and regional) for implementation => utilize UN
infrastructure and engage national political leadership
ii. Establishment/strengthening coordination mechanisms among the
implementing ministries, departments and agencies
iii. Mobilization and allocation of human and financial resources (domestic
and external) to support implementation of national and regional action
plans
iv. Monitoring and reporting in progress through the CAADP biennial review
mechanism => review of indicators for completeness