By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Dakar, Senagal will play host to a summit targeted at unlocking Africa’s food-producing potential and position the continent to become a breadbasket to the world.
Top on the agenda at the three-day summit include 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.
Senegalese President, Macky Sall who is also the Chairperson of the African Union, will be the chief host of the Dakar II Food summit which will have in attendance African heads of state and government together with development partners.
Commencing on January 25, it will be co-hosted by the African Development Bank Group (AfDB).
With the theme, ‘Feed Africa: Food Sovereignty and Resilience’, the summit is expected to address the challenges of malnutrition in the continent, home to a third of the world’s 850 million people living with hunger.
With the removal of barriers to agricultural development aided by new investments, Africa’s agricultural output could increase from $280 billion per year to $1 trillion by 2030, the AfDB said.
The bank quoted the President, Dr. Akinwumi A. Adesina as saying: “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.”
The statement continued, “The summit is at the heart of the Bank Group’s Feed Africa Strategy, one of the institution’s High 5 priority areas to support African countries to significantly increase agricultural growth.
“The summit is a follow-up to the 2015 inaugural edition, during which the Feed Africa Strategy for Agricultural Transformation (2016-2025) in Africa, was proposed.
“During the summit, heads of state and government will convene sessions to develop transformational country-specific food and agriculture delivery compacts. Development partners and the private sector will also play significant roles during sessions and the overall summit. 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, said: “The country compacts will provide targeted roadmaps toward self-sufficiency, and provide interventions that will make Africa’s agriculture sector more business-oriented and commercially viable.”
Dunford added: “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.”
The summit will take place at the Abdou Diouf International Conference Center in Diamniadio, 26 kilometers from Senegal’s capital city Dakar.
According to the bank, the gathering will showcase programmes already contributing to African food sovereignty and resilience, which 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.
