The summit brought together different leaders including the President of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa; the President of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum and the Vice President of Tanzania.
The former Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Hailemariam Dessalegn and the former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo are among other dignitaries who attended the summit.
Speaking at the summit on Wednesday 7th September 2022, President Kagame highlighted that the continent has an obligation to ensure families have nutritious food on tables every day, at the same time enabling farmers to earn more income and growing agribusiness and create new service jobs off the farm.
“Above all, it is about ensuring that Africa is more resilient in the face of unexpected shocks but we are off-track in achieving our agreed targets, under the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program [CAADP] and the Malabo Declaration, as well as the Sustainable Development Goals,” he said.
The Head of State highlighted that the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing conflicts and global supply chain and energy crisis are all placing unusual strain on ‘our food systems’.
He said that the crisis is a serious one where dealing with issues surrounding it requires a sense of urgency. The Head of State also indicated that people need to put everything in perspective and ask themselves how they got to the point.
According to the President, this helps to look back and possibly see where people fell short and try to correct mistakes as fast as they can.
“I am saying this with a sense that most of the things are known, whether it is about building capacities to meet the challenges of the food systems and make sure our people don’t get hungry. Second, food is important in many ways. Nothing else can be done by anybody unless we are fed. It is about life, the fuel for human beings to live and be able to do what they want to do,” he said.
“But associated with that most interesting thing, is that it is also a business. It benefits from skills, knowledge, technology […] if this is the case, why can’t we therefore do what we need to do to bring all these things together so that in Africa, we stop being challenged or running into all kinds of shocks just because a crisis hit somewhere else,” added Kagame.
Considering the Ukraine-Russia crisis, the President said that the whole Africa suffers because it can no longer get wheat and fertilizers among other things.
He maintained that people should learn from such issues given that lessons have existed for a long time.
“If we can learn these lessons and quickly act to prevent such things happening, I think in Africa there are many toolkits we have in our hands that can apply to protect ourselves from these shocks that come up every other time from different continent when we can deal with the situation ourselves,” noted Kagame.
The President of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Mnangagwa said that his country has been under Western sanctions for the last 20 years which affected its capacity certain essential commodities.
He explained that Zimbabwe has been importing wheat for bread from Ukraine while fertilizers were imported from Russia.
Normally, Zimbabwe would grow wheat and keep in reserve quantities that could be used for three months in the country but recently introduced a new model enabling the country to achieve food sufficiency. It is with this regard, the president disclosed that the last agricultural season has seen Zimbabwe producing wheat supply for 13 months where the crisis for wheat importation from Ukraine does not currently affect his country.
As Mnangagwa said, the country has adopted another model to mitigate climate change and introduced a program to build dams to facilitate irrigation in all provinces of Zimbabwe.
He said that his country targets 360,000 hectares of land under irrigation and expressed optimism that the exercise will have been completed by the next season to be self-sufficient whether there is drought or not.
The Vice President of Tanzania, Philip Mpango said that his country is fortunately self-sufficient in food and exports to the region but pointed out issues related to post-harvest losses standing at 30% of all agricultural yields.
He also revealed that his country was also affected by multiple crises including the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine among others.
“Our GDP collapsed from an annual growth of 7% down to 4.8% currently,” Mpango said.
To mitigate the effects that occasioned economic downfall, Tanzania oil seeds including sunflower.
Mpango went on to explain that the country urges its people to opt for substitutes including yams, potatoes and cassava instead of sticking to wheat.
The country also decided to increase its budgetary allocations to agriculture from an average of around US$125 to US$404 million.
President Kagame also talked about climate change noting that the African continent contributed the least to the crisis. He however stressed that it should not stop people from taking needed action to mitigate related effects.
“If you look at what is happening in each of our countries, regions and beyond, rain is being affected, different problems around that and therefore, it affects food systems and food security,” he observed.
“We have to make investments ourselves, to begin with even our limited resources. For example, we have to invest smartly in data systems so that we are at least informed as far as certain elements are concerned that contribute to the crisis and then know how to deal or treat different regions of our countries or continent,” stated Kagame.
Zimbabwean President also highlighted that Africa has all the resources to develop countries with regards to food security and fertilizers.
“Africa has the resources to modernize our countries, industrialize and mechanize them. All what is needed is cooperation, integration and the sharing of our experiences and resources. If we do that, we will succeed,” he affirmed.
The President of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum said that the African continent needs to prioritize investment in technology to access climate change data, and produce needed fertilizers to become food sufficient and develop strong education sector to meet its aspirations.
The Secretary-General of commonwealth, Patricia Scotland said that the organization is comprised of 56 countries with 2.5 billion people of whom 60% are aged below 30. The combined GDP of the countries also stands at US$13,000 billion.
She stressed that collaboration between countries is key to address the issue of food insufficiency affecting their people.
Dr. Agnes Kalibata, the president of Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) said that many people are unable to feed their children with balanced diet.
The good diet can cost US$4 (over Rwf4000) yet the poverty line in Africa is at US$1.9.
“This means that a huge part of our populations can’t afford a healthy diet,” she noted.
Dessalegn who serves as AGRA’s Board Chair revealed that the African continent has bold targets to eradicate poverty, hunger, enable access to quality education, gender equality and access to safe water among others by 2030.
Organized under the theme ‘Grow, Nourish, Reward — Bold Actions for Resilient Food Systems’, the AGRF 2022 Summit is taking place in Kigali from 5th to 9th September 2022.
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