The 2019 African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) scheduled to take place between September 3 and 6, 2019 was yesterday launched in Accra.
The forum, which is the 10th edition since its inception in 2010 would be hosted in Ghana and is expected to be attended by eight other African Heads of State and more than 2,000 participants from across the globe.
This year’s edition is on the theme: “Grow Digital: Leveraging Digital Transformation for Sustainable Food Systems in Africa.”
Performing the launch, the West Africa Regional Coordinator of the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF), Mr Foster Boateng, said the hosting of the forum was very important to Ghana because of “the who and how” the idea was birth.
He said the AGRF was considered the world’s most important and impactful forum for African Agriculture, pulling together stakeholders in the agricultural landscape to take practical actions and share lessons that would move African agriculture forward.
Mr Boateng said the forum was a multi-disciplinary one where delegates discussed and committed to programmes, investment and policies that could counter the major challenges affecting the agriculture sector on the continent.
He explained that the AGRF partners group was made up of a coalition of 17 leading actors in African agriculture, including the AUC, the African Development Bank, the African Fertiliser and Agribusiness Partnership, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Food Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).
Others are Grow Africa, the International Development Research Centre of Canada, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the Mastercard Foundation, NEPAD Agency, OCP Group, the Rockefeller Foundation, Syngenta, Yara International ASA and Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation.
Mr Boateng noted that the forum would be used to evaluate how far the continent had progressed in the past decade and look at ways of jump-starting what needed to be done differently in the next five to ten years to put Africa’ agriculture on a new footing with digitisation as a key driver to agricultural transformation.
He said AGRF would particularly identify and catalyze the enabling policies, programmes and investments to leverage digital transformation to drive sustainable food systems on the continent.
“Given the unprecedented growth and adoption of digital technologies, Africa has an opportunity to leapfrog the agricultural transformation trajectory of the past and revolutionise life by overcoming isolation, speeding up change, creating jobs for the future and taking success to scale,” he added.
Mr Boateng further noted that the forum would take stock, evaluate actions, and learn from compelling evidence across the continent, presented by many of the most inspiring leaders, including young people, turning agriculture into thriving enterprises.
In addition, he said it would afford farmers the opportunity to demonstrate how the use of technology and better farming methods was able to transform entire communities and nations.
“Ghana and other public sector leaders will share experiences in delivering policies and investment to advance jobs and food security; while private sector champions and will showcase their efforts in innovation and opening up scalable and sustainable market opportunities in Africa’s evolving food systems,” he .
BY CLIFF EKUFUL