Seeds, Systems & Sovereignty: Shaping Eastern Africa's Food Future

20 August 2026, Farmers, researchers, civil society organisations, food-system advocates and agricultural stakeholders came together for the online webinar “Seeds, Systems & Sovereignty: Shaping Eastern Africa’s Food Future.” 

The webinar marked the launch of the 1st Eastern Africa Indigenous Seed Conference 2026, hosted by Seed Savers Kenya.

The conversation placed seeds at the centre of a much larger discussion about food sovereignty, biodiversity, farmer rights and the resilience of Eastern Africa’s food systems.

Seeds are more than agricultural inputs

Seeds are often discussed as one of many inputs farmers need to produce food. But indigenous and locally adapted seeds carry something more: knowledge, culture, biodiversity and generations of farmer experience.

Farmers have traditionally selected, saved, exchanged and adapted seeds to suit their local environments. These practices can help maintain crop diversity and preserve varieties that are adapted to particular climates, soils, diets and cultural traditions. That makes seed systems an important part of the region’s food future.

The webinar therefore encouraged participants to look beyond the question of whether farmers have access to seed and consider a deeper question: Who controls the seed system, and who gets to decide what farmers grow?

Community seed banks do not fit conventional donor funding models: they are small, locally governed, volunteer-intensive and require long-term, flexible support, while funders often prefer short, measurable projects with clearer commercial or technological outputs; at the same time, restrictive seed regulations, weak market integration and limited access to finance make them appear harder to scale—even though evidence shows they are important for agrobiodiversity and seed security.

 Farmer led research on indigenous seeds is key. PROLINNOVA (Promoting Local Innovation) emerged in the early 2000s as an international network promoting farmer-led innovation and participatory research in sustainable agriculture, particularly through partnerships between farmers, researchers, NGOs, and other development actors. PROLINNOVA was conceived in 1999 with support from GFAR (then the Global Forum on Agricultural Research), which helped establish it as a Global Partnership Programme (GPP); it later became a recognised GFAR/GFAiR Collective Action.

The 20 August conversation was therefore more than a discussion about seeds. It was a conversation about who shapes Eastern Africa's agricultural future. Its timing is significant. The launch of the Eastern Africa Indigenous Seed Conference creates a broader platform for farmers, researchers and advocates to continue exploring these questions.

The November conference is expected to provide an opportunity to showcase farmer innovations, document community seed practices and advance conversations around seed sovereignty across the region.

Related:

COP17 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will be held in Yerevan, Armenia, from 19–30October 2026. COP17 is the first major global review of progress toward the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) and its 23 targets for 2030.

 The COP 17, COP-MOP 12 and COP-MOP 6 meetings, are open to organizations and agencies, whether governmental or nongovernmental, qualified in fields relating to the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, which have informed the Secretariat of their wish to be represented at these meetings. New organizations requesting admission as observer should be submitted to the Secretariat by e-mail to: secretariat@cbd.int by 31 August 2026.