By Prossy Nandudu
As stakeholders in the food value chain gear up for the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, Heifer International is calling for creating Catalytic Financing and Technology to accelerate Africa’s Food Systems.
This is because leveraging technology and innovation in addition to working with key government and development partners to end hunger and poverty will increase food production on the continent.
This was revealed by Heifer International’s Senior Vice President of Africa Programs, Aduwa Ifedi in an interview ahead of the Food Systems Forum which kicked off today (September, 02) and will end on September 06.
“We shall deepen our conversation with key stakeholders on how innovative financing can catalyze technology integration to enable smallholder farmers to improve productivity,” she said.
The Africa Food Systems Forum is Africa’s leading platform for dialogue and collaboration that brings together industry leaders, policymakers, innovators, development agencies, private sector giants, farmers and agripreneurs to discuss critical challenges and opportunities in Africa’s food systems.
The theme for this year’s event is ‘Innovate, Accelerate and Scale: Delivering Food Systems Transformation in a Digital and Climate Era’.
Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame will join other world leaders at the event, in a demonstration of the high-level commitment to addressing challenges facing Africa’s food systems.
Organised by AGRA, the AFS Forum is considered the continent’s biggest gathering of stakeholders in the agriculture sector.
At the forum, Heifer International, along with strategic partners, young innovators and smallholder farming organizations will highlight their experiences at various sessions to inspire collaborative action and drive change in the areas of leveraging innovative financing to accelerate technology integration in agriculture.
A report released earlier this year shows that Heifer’s innovative financing of a tech-led tractor leasing initiative created by agritech company, Hello Tractor, unlocked commercial capital, powering beneficiary smallholder farmers in the pilot phase to over 200% increase in income, Adesuwa said.
“We are inspired by the incredible contributions that young visionary African innovators can make towards transforming our food systems and we are actively backing their innovations,” she said.
Adesuwa added, “Through our various programs, especially AYuTe NextGen, we provide the catalytic financing and market knowledge that these innovators need to iterate and scale their agritech solutions for challenges faced by smallholder farmers.”
She explained further that by integrating finance and technology they will be able to move smallholder farmers from sustenance to commercial farming.
