02/09 Delicious, Nutritious, Culturally-Rooted Food: What does it take to transform Food Systems?
Organizers: Tailored Food, ProVeg Nigeria, ProVeg International, Globisis
Focus: TED-style talk on innovation that honors culture, empowers youth, ensures nutrition, and delights the palate.
This short, high-energy session looked at the future of African food systems through the lens of culture, health, youth, and sustainability. The central question it tackles is how Africa can build food systems that are not only climate-smart and nutritious, but also deeply rooted in cultural identity and able to excite consumers.
Organizers / Speakers: ProVeg International & ProVeg Nigeria – bringing global and local perspectives on sustainable diets and plant-forward innovation ; Tailored Food – sharing experience in developing context-specific, nutrient-rich food products adapted to African realities ; Globisis – providing insights on systems-level innovation and youth-driven approaches.
Focus: TED-style talk on innovation that honors culture, empowers youth, ensures nutrition, and delights the palate.
This short, high-energy session looked at the future of African food systems through the lens of culture, health, youth, and sustainability. The central question it tackles is how Africa can build food systems that are not only climate-smart and nutritious, but also deeply rooted in cultural identity and able to excite consumers.
Organizers / Speakers: ProVeg International & ProVeg Nigeria – bringing global and local perspectives on sustainable diets and plant-forward innovation ; Tailored Food – sharing experience in developing context-specific, nutrient-rich food products adapted to African realities ; Globisis – providing insights on systems-level innovation and youth-driven approaches.
Key Themes:
- Cultural identity in food systems: ensuring food transformation does not erase heritage, but instead amplifies local traditions ; Youth innovation: spotlighting how young entrepreneurs and food innovators are redesigning African diets for nutrition and sustainability ; Sustainability and climate-smart diets: examining how to balance dietary shifts with ecological resilience; Consumer experience: recognizing that to succeed, nutritious food must also be desirable—appealing to taste and social identity.
02/09 | China-Africa Agricultural Cooperation for Food Security in Africa
Organizers: Tshwane University of Technology & Chinese Academy of Agricultural SciencesFocus: Crop breeding (short-stalk, stress-tolerant, high-protein maize) and nitrogen-fixing bacteria innovations.
02/09 Empowering youth and women smallholders through access to sustainable inputs: Seeds, bio‑solutions and mechanization
Organizer: IFAD
Focus: Enhancing input access to empower youth and women smallholder farmers. ifad.org
02/09 Re-imagine the future of leadership & catalysts for food systems transformation
Organizer: IFADFocus: Leadership and catalysts for transformative action in food systems.
02/09 Pioneering a 3FS Africa Community of Practice (3FS CoP) under Kampala
Organizers: IFAD, AKADEMIYA2063, GAIN, World BankFocus: Launching a food systems finance Community of Practice, exploring domestic and external financing flows and pathways.
03/09 | School Meals – Transforming Local Food Systems
Organizers: IPAR, IFPRI, IDRCThis side event explored how school meal programs can serve as powerful levers for building resilient and inclusive agrifood systems in Africa. By creating demand for indigenous, climate-resilient crops and promoting regenerative agriculture, school meals offer a unique opportunity to improve both nutrition and environmental outcomes.
The session showcased evidence and case studies from multiple African countries, demonstrating how school feeding initiatives are being used to advance gender equality, youth empowerment, and local procurement at national scale. It also provided a platform for dialogue among stakeholders from research, policy, civil society, and the private sector to identify concrete pathways for scaling up sustainable school meals across the continent. Ultimately, the event aimed to foster collective action and policy innovation to transform food systems from the ground up—starting with schools.
Focus: Partnerships and innovation pipelines for scaling agricultural research and impact.
Focus: Strengthening soil information systems and inclusive incentives for soil health.
- Claudia Ringler, Director, Natural Resources and Resilience (NRR), IFPRI
03/09| IsDB-CGIAR Supporting Food Systems Transformation: Accelerating Impact through Innovation and Partnership
Organizers: IsDB, ICRISAT, ILRI, CIP, IITA, AfricaRice, CIFOR-ICRAFFocus: Partnerships and innovation pipelines for scaling agricultural research and impact.
03/09 | Public Incentives and Information Systems for Africa’s Soil Health
Organizers: CA4SH, CIFOR-ICRAF, GIZ, AUDA-NEPAD, World Bank, Norad, Clim-Eat, AICCRA, YPARDFocus: Strengthening soil information systems and inclusive incentives for soil health.
02/09 | Artificial Intelligence Driven Agricultural Advisory
Organizers: Yara, IFAD, CABI, AGRA, FAO, BMGFThis event spotlighted the promise of AI to enhance agricultural advisory services in Africa. It highlighted how AI-powered tools—such as natural language interfaces—can bridge information, language, and accessibility divides, allowing farmers to receive tailored advice by integrating localized weather, soil, and market data. However, the session also tackled significant challenges, including trust, algorithmic biases, AI hallucinations, scalability issues, cost concerns, and the need for robust governance frameworks. The goal: harness AI to boost productivity and profitability for smallholder farmers while ensuring ethical and sustainable deployment.
The side event was co-organized by a number of major development, agricultural, and research organizations: IFPRI, Yara International, IFAD, CABI, AGRA, FAO, and the Gates Foundation.
RECORDING FORTHCOMING
The objectives were:
- Explore how AI tools can be made accessible to small-scale farmers. This includes leveraging things like natural-language interfaces to overcome digital and language barriers.
- Tailor advisory systems using localized data: weather, soils, markets. The idea is to provide decision support that is context-aware for individual farmers rather than generic advice.
- Identifying and discussing the risks: trust, bias, hallucinations (i.e. AI producing information that is incorrect but seems plausible), scalability and sustainability. Governance and safeguards are needed.
- Impacts expected: improved productivity, profitability for small-scale producers across Africa.
- Organizers & Co-Hosts
Presenters
- Parmesh Shah – Global Lead, Digital Agriculture, World Bank
- Rikin Gandhi – CEO, Digital Green
- Fatema Allmulla – International Affairs Office, UAE Presidential Court
- Jawoo Koo – Deputy Director, Digital Accelerator, CGIAR
- Jamie Collinson – CEO, iSDA
Panelists
- Salim Kinyimu – Director ICT, KALRO
- Seema Gohil – Director, Safaricom DigiFarm
- Ameen Jauhar – Data Governance Lead, CABI
- Moderator Stewart Collis – Gates Foundation
04/09 Can AI Empower Youth Futures?
Co-organized by IFPRI and Farm Radio International (FRI)
How can new advances in artificial intelligence—especially voice technologies—amplify youth voices and create more inclusive food systems? This side event brings together researchers, digital innovators, and young leaders to explore the intersections of AI, language, and livelihoods. Drawing on recent research from IFPRI and implementation experience from Farm Radio International, the session will spotlight both emerging opportunities and unresolved tensions in using AI to support youth in agriculture. From speech recognition tools for lowresource languages to participatory design methods in radio-based advisory systems, we ask what it will take to ensure these technologies are truly empowering
- Jawoo Koo, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
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