GFAiR’s Collective Action on Forgotten Foods (CA FF) brings farmers, researchers, civil society and private-sector actors together to revive neglected and underutilized species (NUS) by strengthening farmer-led conservation and traditional knowledge, research and innovation, markets and value chains, and policy support—thereby improving biodiversity, nutrition, climate resilience and farmers’ livelihoods.
Interview with Francois Stepman, Advisor Global Forum for Agriculture and Innovation Research.
The speaker discusses the importance of revitalizing local nutrition and agroecology in Africa to combat malnutrition and climate change.
Local promotion: Consumption of local produce
The goal is to promote African culinary heritage (lentils, beans, local plants) to reduce reliance on imports of rice, milk, and wheat.
The concept of "forgotten foods" is central to addressing biodiversity and malnutrition issues.
Intergenerational initiatives involving young people from Ghana and Nigeria aim to pass on traditional recipes through cooking workshops.
Agroecological issues: Production and health challenges
The excessive use of toxic pesticides, particularly in Benin, is linked to a rise in health problems such as cancer.
A major debate remains: can agroecology feed Africa's rapidly growing population—such as Nigeria's 220 million inhabitants?
Research must focus on the genetic potential of rare plants regarding their resilience to climate change.
Research directions: Funding and priorities
There is a critical need to redirect funding (from the World Bank, the European Commission, and national governments) toward research on local produce.
Priorities must shift from an economy focused solely on exports (cocoa, maize) to the revitalization of local resources.
How can a balance be struck between the yield requirements of a growing population and the preservation of age-old agroecological methods?
The West African Caravan for Land, Water and Peasant Seeds has become one of the region's most visible grassroots mobilizations for food sovereignty, agroecology and communities' rights over natural resources. Initiated by the Global Convergence of Land and Water Struggles – West Africa (CGLTE-OA), the Caravan brings together farmers' organizations, pastoralists, fishers, women's and youth movements, civil-society organizations and agroecology networks. Since its first edition in 2016, it has sought to make the voices of rural communities heard in debates over land, water, seeds and agricultural policy. The movement itself brings together more than 300 organizations and has involved major regional networks including the Network of Peasant Organizations and Agricultural Producers in West Africa (ROPPA), COPAGEN, the West African Committee for Peasant Seeds (COASP), La Via Campesina Africa, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) and We Are the Solution.
From a regional caravan to a movement for food sovereignty
At the heart of the Caravan is a simple principle: food sovereignty is difficult to achieve when farming communities do not control the resources required to produce food. Access to land and water is therefore inseparable from farmers' ability to save, reproduce, exchange and improve their own seeds. From its first edition, the Caravan explicitly connected these rights with family farming, peasant agroecology and food sovereignty, while challenging land, water and seed grabbing. Its vision emphasizes locally rooted food systems, biodiversity, farmers' control over seeds and respectful relationships between producers and consumers.
The Caravan is particularly significant because it takes these debates out of conference rooms and into farming communities. Rather than organizing a single regional meeting, delegations travel between countries and stop in communities where farmers, traditional authorities, women's groups, young people and policymakers can exchange experiences. Local struggles consequently become part of a regional political agenda. Research on the movement has highlighted precisely this ability of the Caravan to connect localized struggles over natural resources with broader West African and international movements for food sovereignty and climate justice.
Peasant and indigenous seeds at the centre
Peasant, traditional and indigenous seed systems are fundamental to this struggle. Generations of farmers have selected crops and varieties according to local soils, rainfall patterns, food cultures, nutritional preferences and farming systems. These systems maintain agricultural biodiversity while continuously adapting crops to changing environments. Seed sovereignty therefore goes beyond having physical access to seed: it concerns farmers' ability to save, select, multiply, exchange and transmit planting material and associated knowledge from one generation to another.
This is especially important for Africa's neglected and underutilized species (NUS), traditional crops and indigenous foods. Many such crops survive not because they have been prioritized by commercial seed companies, but because farming communities—often women—have continued cultivating, selecting, cooking and exchanging them. The erosion of farmer-managed seed systems can therefore mean more than the disappearance of varieties. It can also lead to the loss of traditional knowledge, food cultures, dietary diversity and locally adapted genetic resources.
The Caravan consequently raises a fundamental question about the future of African agriculture: who controls the seed? A food system increasingly dependent on a narrow range of commercial varieties risks marginalizing the diversity maintained in farmers' fields. By contrast, strengthening farmer-managed seed systems can complement formal breeding and genebank conservation by keeping crop diversity alive and evolving under real farming conditions. Previous Caravan activities have explicitly promoted common farmer seed banks alongside agroecological practices.
Women as custodians of seed diversity
The Caravan also brings attention to the often insufficiently recognized role of women in conserving agricultural biodiversity. In many West African farming and food systems, women are involved not only in production but also in selecting seed, storing planting material, processing crops and maintaining knowledge about preparation, nutrition and cultural uses. During earlier editions of the Caravan, organizers explicitly highlighted women's land rights and described women as important guardians of seeds.
Protecting indigenous and farmer-managed seeds must therefore go hand in hand with strengthening women's access to land, resources, decision-making and markets. A seed may be conserved in a genebank, but maintaining it as part of a living food culture requires farmers who continue to grow it and consumers who continue to value it.
The 2026 Caravan: converging on Cotonou
The fifth West African Caravan, held from 19 July to 9 August 2026, significantly expanded this regional mobilization. Two routes crossed West Africa: a Sahelian route from Senegal through Mali and Burkina Faso to Togo, and a coastal route from Guinea through Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana to Togo. They subsequently converged in Benin, where participants also met a Central African Caravan travelling from Cameroon through Nigeria ahead of the 17th World Social Forum in Cotonou. Organizers projected more than 500 participants, 18 stopovers and mobilization involving more than 20,000 people, particularly rural communities, women and youth.
The launch in Tambacounda, Senegal, already demonstrated the broad coalition behind the initiative. Participants included representatives from Senegal, Mauritania, The Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, alongside farmers' organizations, social movements, community leaders and local authorities. The launch was supported by the Dynamic for an Agroecological Transition in Senegal (DyTAES) and Enda Pronat.
The West African Caravan was initially stopped by Beninese police and sent back toward the border on 3 August 2026, reportedly amid problems concerning authorization and cross-border entry procedures for the large convoy of more than 400 participants from multiple West African countries.
The arrival in Cotonou was therefore more than the conclusion of a journey. It brought a decade of grassroots experience—from the Caravan editions of 2016, 2018, 2021, 2023 and 2026—into a global civil-society forum. Land governance, access to water, peasant seeds, agroecology, food sovereignty, climate change, social cohesion and peace could consequently be discussed not as separate issues, but as components of the same transformation.
From seed conservation to transformation of food systems
The importance of the West African Caravan ultimately lies in its insistence that seeds are simultaneously biological resources, cultural heritage, sources of livelihoods and instruments of food sovereignty. Conserving indigenous crops without strengthening the communities that cultivate them is insufficient. Likewise, promoting agroecology without addressing farmers' access to land, water and diverse seed can only achieve limited transformation.
For neglected and underutilized species, this message is particularly powerful. Their revival requires a chain connecting farmers and seed custodians → community seed systems → research and characterization → agroecological production → processing and entrepreneurship → markets and consumers → supportive policies. The Caravan helps ensure that the first actors in this chain—the farmers and communities who have maintained this diversity—remain central to decisions about its future.
After ten years of mobilization, the West African Caravan demonstrates that the struggle for food sovereignty is also a struggle for agricultural biodiversity and control over the foundations of food production. Its recurring message—rights to land, water and peasant seeds are a common struggle—has particular resonance at a time of climate change, biodiversity loss and increasing concentration within agricultural input systems. Protecting Africa's indigenous and farmer-managed seeds is therefore not about returning to the past. It is about ensuring that the extraordinary diversity created and maintained by generations of African farmers remains available for future breeding, resilient farming, diversified diets and locally determined food systems.
Related:
10 August 2026. Niger Restored 900,000 Hectares of Dead Desert With Shovels — Half a Million People Now Eat. Niger Restored 900,000 Hectares of Dead Desert With Shovels, Half a Million People Now Eat, proving that sometimes the best technology to save the future is actually centuries old. In the southern Maradi region of Niger, a stretch of barren land that the United Nations once wrote off as "finished" is now thriving. This isn't the result of billions of dollars in foreign aid or heavy machinery; it's the result of an ancient, forgotten farming method called the "half-moon" and "zaï pits," pioneered by a man everyone once called insane.
This video explores how 528 sites in the Sahel are holding three million cubic meters of water, recharging aquifers, and creating life-saving microclimates. We also look at the reality behind the African Union's Great Green Wall project, and how grassroots, shovel-in-hand resilience is successfully pushing back the Sahara Desert.
Ntiligira Enterprise is a Ghanaian agribusiness based in Tamale, led by Managing Director Linda Akeyate Issaka, that promotes sustainable and organic farming through the local production of environmentally friendly agricultural inputs.
The enterprise produces neem-based pesticides, neem oil and neem cake, as well as compost, providing farmers with alternatives to synthetic pesticides and fertilizers while creating value from locally available neem resources.
Ntiligira was selected for the Ghana Climate Innovation Centre (GCIC) Cohort 10 incubation programme and has also been profiled as a green-economy investment project, reflecting its potential to contribute to climate-smart agriculture, soil health and the expansion of biological crop protection in Ghana.
Linda Akeyate Issaka describes Ntiligira Enterprise as a company founded in 2020 to provide organic alternatives to chemical pesticides.
"Ntiligira means my redeemer"
The business specialises in producing neem oil for pest control and neem cake for nematode treatment and soil fertilisation. Additionally, the company engages in small-scale composting to support organic farming systems.
Production Capacity
Daily output with two machines: 50 to 60 bags (50 kg each) of neem seeds and approximately 450 litres of oil.
Monthly capacity: 10,000 bags of neem cake (50 kg).
Batch capacity: Approximately 20,000 bags of compost (50 kg).
Operational Challenges
She identifies significant barriers to scaling production and reducing costs to compete with inorganic fertilisers. A primary concern is that the price difference between organic and inorganic options discourages farmer adoption.
The company currently lacks essential machinery such as a chipper truck, water tanker, and a backhoe machine. Acquiring these would allow the business to lower compost prices from 110 cedis per bag to between 70 or 80 cedis.
Furthermore, there is a critical need for dedicated cargo trucks to transport seeds from communities; this ensures the organic integrity of the seeds by preventing contamination from chemicals during transit in general market trucks.
Growth Potential
Despite current hurdles, Linda Akeyate Issaka remains optimistic due to the abundant availability of raw materials in the local region.
The primary goal is to secure investment or acquire logistics to meet the high demand from farmers within the organic system.
1 July. Asia-Pacific Biopesticides Community of Practice This webinar focused on how nature-based pest management and biopesticides can strengthen climate-resilient agriculture across Asia and Africa, with particular attention to dryland farming systems and fragile mountain ecosystems.
25 June 2026. The Monthly Talks on Agroecology webinar focused on the growing investment potential of the organic fertilizer sector in Africa as a strategic component of the continent's agroecological transition.
8 August 2026. Cotonou and Abomey-Calavi, Benin. The 17th World Social Forum (WSF) returned to Africa from 4 to 8 August 2026, bringing social movements, farmers’ organizations, civil society, researchers and activists from across the world to Benin.
The main programme included more than 200 self-organized activities and 12 thematic villages at the University of Abomey-Calavi, alongside activities in Cotonou, Ouidah and Porto-Novo.
Within this landscape, agroecology emerged as an important meeting point between debates on food sovereignty, climate justice, biodiversity, land and water, farmers’ rights and alternatives to industrial agriculture. Agroecology was explicitly included in the Forum's thematic axis on Ecological Crises, Climate Justice and Just Transition, which connected the defence of common goods—land, water, forests and biodiversity—with struggles against land grabbing and extractivism and with the promotion of peasant alternatives, agroecology and food sovereignty. The official programme associated this thematic area with dozens of activities and more than one hundred participating organizations.
The Agroecology village
The Agroecology Village provided a particularly relevant space for bringing these interconnected struggles together. Rather than presenting agroecology simply as a set of environmentally friendly agricultural practices, discussions across the Forum situated it within a broader transformation of food systems: strengthening farmers' control over seeds and natural resources, reducing dependence on hazardous pesticides and external inputs, protecting biodiversity and restoring local food systems. This approach also connected agroecology with the political dimensions of food sovereignty and farmers' self-determination.
Several activities reinforced this perspective. La Via Campesina organized discussions on peasant internationalism, including a session on the struggle for comprehensive agrarian reform and peasant agroecology as resistance. The programme emphasized that these struggles are rooted in the everyday realities and aspirations of farmers and rural communities. Another workshop, “Seeds of Resilience: Food Sovereignty and Agroecology,” organized by the World Council of Churches, focused specifically on farmer-led agroecology, seed sovereignty and alternatives to industrial agriculture.
A second major thread concerned the health, environmental and social consequences of pesticide-dependent agriculture. The programme included the screening of the documentary Toxic Harvest followed by discussion, as well as sessions linked to the planned West African People's Tribunal on Pesticides.
The initiative, promoted by the Coalition for the Protection of African Genetic Heritage (COPAGEN) together with other West African civil-society organizations, brought together actors involved in agroecological transition and movements challenging the impacts of pesticides.
Several debates placed the transition away from hazardous pesticides within the larger struggle for farmers' rights, healthy food and ecological sustainability.
The Village also highlighted how agroecology cannot be separated from seed sovereignty and agricultural biodiversity. Farmers' ability to conserve, exchange and develop their own seeds is central both to resilience and to maintaining locally adapted crops and varieties. This has particular significance for Africa's neglected and underutilized species (NUS), traditional crops and indigenous foods, many of which are well adapted to local environments but remain marginalized by agricultural research, markets and policies. Bringing agroecology together with seed sovereignty therefore opens opportunities to reconnect biodiversity conservation with nutrition, local food cultures, climate adaptation and rural livelihoods.
The Cotonou discussions also showed the importance of linking agroecological production to the rest of the food value chain. One Forum session addressed food self-sufficiency from production through processing and regional and international trade to supportive public policies, bringing together farmers, ecological initiatives and women food processors. Such discussions are important because agroecological transformation cannot succeed through changes at farm level alone: processing, markets, consumer demand, public procurement, finance and supportive policies must enable farmers and small food enterprises to turn diversified production into viable livelihoods.
More broadly, the Agroecology Village illustrated why the World Social Forum remains an important space for connecting movements that often work separately. Climate justice, farmers' rights, seed diversity, women's empowerment, youth engagement, food sovereignty, biodiversity and the struggle for land and water all converge in agroecology. The Cotonou Forum therefore helped frame agroecology not simply as an agricultural technique but as a pathway towards more democratic and locally rooted food systems in wh
ich farmers and communities have greater influence over the resources, knowledge and markets on which their livelihoods depend.
The significance of Cotonou lies precisely in this convergence. The Forum's message—“Another world is possible”—found a concrete expression in agroecology: alternatives already exist in farmers' fields, community seed systems, women's processing enterprises, indigenous knowledge and local food markets.
The challenge after Cotonou is to connect these experiences more systematically with agricultural research and education, investment, supportive public policies and regional and global knowledge exchange, so that agroecology can move from successful local initiatives towards transformation at scale.
Across Africa, millions of smallholder farmers continue to rely on farmer-managed seed systems (FMSS) for their livelihoods, agrobiodiversity and resilience. Yet these systems are increasingly under pressure from the expansion of industrial seed systems, changing seeds markets and evolving regulatory frameworks.
At the same time, many farmers and civil society organizations alike struggle to distinguish between different types of seed systems and technologies, making informed choices more difficult.
An interactive panel brought together relevant stakeholders to explore how FMSS can be strengthened and safeguarded as a cornerstone of agroecology and food sovereignty.
The session highlighted the implications of GMOs and hybrid seeds on agroecology and food sovereignty in Africa. Drawing on recent experiences from across the continent, the discussion address seed quality, seed sovereignty, community seed systems, and the role of public policy in ensuring that farmers have genuine choices over the seeds they use.
The session was an open dialogue on how to build and protect seed systems that are transparent, resilient, and accountable to farmers. Participants had the opportunity to share experiences, discuss practical challenges and join collective action to strengthen FMSS across Africa.
Omoniyi Françoise Agbodjo is a PhD holder in socio-anthropology specializing in agricultural policies and peasant seed systems in West Africa. Her research and field missions notably focus on the West African Committee for Peasant Seeds (COASP) within the UMR SENS (Knowledge, Environment, Societies) research unit.
The West African Committee for Peasant Seeds (COASP, or Comité Ouest Africain de Semences Paysannes) is a regional peasant-led network established in 2011. It protects farmer-managed seed systems, promotes agroecology, and defends food sovereignty across West Africa against industrial seed laws and GMO.
She has field experience with peasant organizations across West Africa (Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Niger, Senegal, Mali).
She collaborated with CIRAD on strengthening seed systems (SHAWA II project).
She answers the question: "Why are not more researchers attending the Social forum", Which support is needed for the community seeds banks? What is the importance of Intellectual property protection? What are your recommendations for external interventions?
The role of scientific research
The researcher explains that current research is often funded by conventional organizations.
This funding limits researchers' interest in agroecology and the right to farmers' seeds.
A new generation of researchers is emerging with a desire to promote agriculture in a different way.
Farmers' seeds are presented as an essential genetic, cultural, and nutritional heritage.
Support for community seed banks
Seed banks require monitoring to verify the quality of their selection and multiplication methods.
Documentation must adhere to quality criteria defined by the farmers themselves.
Work has already been carried out in West Africa to document seeds from the field to community seed stores.
Intellectual property protection
Intellectual property rights should belong to the communities, which define their own protection rules.
Protection mechanisms need to be structured by scaling up progressively from the village level to the national and African levels.
There is a real risk of biopiracy if communities do not document their genetic heritage.
If communities fail to document their resources, third-party organizations will do so for their own profit.
Recommendations for external interventions
Interventions must prioritize seed protection based on the specific needs of the communities.
Communities wish to devise their own conservation methods, whether in granaries or community seed stores.
Living seeds should circulate between the land and the food system rather than remaining stored in a freezer.
Support should focus on the production, multiplication, and protected documentation of seeds by farmers' organizations.
Related:
5–7 October 2026. The AU Seed Summit is due to take place in Eswatini, where the AU farmer-managed seed systems (FMSS) Policy Framework and Strategy and Action Plan are likely to be adopted.
What is decided in this process could shape how African governments recognise, regulate, finance, and domesticate farmer-managed seed systems (FMSS) for years to come. It is therefore imperative that civil society—and especially small-scale farmers, women seed custodians, pastoralists, agroecology movements, and food sovereignty networks—engage urgently, strongly, collectively, and politically in this moment.
The paper argues that the AU farmer-managed seed systems (FMSS) process cannot be read in isolation from the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Annex on plant variety protection (PVP), adopted under the AfCFTA IP Protocol architecture.
While the AU FMSS instruments are still open to advocacy and are largely normative and programmatic, the PVP Annex sits within a stronger treaty-based trade and IP framework. This creates a serious legal and political asymmetry: FMSS recognition may remain soft guidance, while breeders’ rights, PVP enforcement, and harmonised IP rules may move through harder legal channels as countries amend or adopt national PVP laws.
Why does a continent holding 60% of the world's uncultivated arable land spend a staggering $100 billion every single year importing food? In this masterclass episode of Women in Geopolitics, leading economic and policy experts challenge everything we think we know about African agriculture.
Ambassador Peko explains why Africa doesn't suffer from a production deficit, but rather an ownership deficit. While African women produce up to 80% of local food, the broader economy remains trapped: exporting raw materials like cocoa, cotton, and coffee, only to buy them back as branded Swiss chocolate, Louis Vuitton fashion, and Starbucks coffee.
Technology (leveraging AI alongside indigenous knowledge like Zai pits),
Infrastructure (combating the tragic 30% to 40% post-harvest food losses),
and original African Brands.
On-the-ground expert Maureen addressed the stark logistical and structural barriers preventing local producers from effectively connecting to continental markets.
Africa’s indigenous and neglected foods are increasingly being recognized not as relics of the past, but as strategic resources for the future. They can contribute simultaneously to healthier diets, biodiversity conservation, climate resilience, stronger local economies and culturally grounded food systems. Yet many of these foods continue to disappear from farms, markets, kitchens, schools and diets, taking with them traditional knowledge about how they are cultivated, prepared and used.
The GFAiR Collective Action on Forgotten Foods (CAFF) is responding by placing young people at the centre of efforts to rediscover, innovate around and create new opportunities from Africa’s food biodiversity.
Participants from from Benin, Gabon, Canada, Congo, France, Cameroon, Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, and other countries and several generations explored one central question: “How can young people transform forgotten foods into the foods of the future?”
The discussion showed that this transformation is already underway. Recipients of the 2025 CAFF grants presented concrete youth-led initiatives:
Chimezie Marvellous, Federal University of Technology, Owerri, described efforts connecting elders and young people to preserve Igbo food heritage in Imo State, Nigeria. The project "Connecting elders and young people to preserve Igbo food heritage" responds to the risk that indigenous foods may disappear together with the knowledge of how they are grown, prepared and valued: elders and other community knowledge holders serve as custodians of traditional food knowledge, while young people help carry this heritage forward and make it relevant to contemporary food systems.
Israel Oyeyemi presented the youth-led Campus Food Heritage Hub helping young people rediscover forgotten vegetables.
The initiative "CFF Agroschooling Project – Rediscovering Forgotten Vegetables" conducted awareness activities at the University of Ibadan, where students learned about the nutritional, cultural and environmental importance of indigenous vegetables and participated in documenting local species. Young people also received indigenous vegetable seeds and hands-on cultivation training, while a Campus Indigenous Food Festival and Cooking Competition, themed “Preserving Our Indigenous Food Heritage,” brought food knowledge into a more creative and experiential setting. Digital campaigns further promoted traditional vegetables, their recipes and nutritional value. The project covered species including amaranth (Efo Tètè), Corchorus (Ewedu), Malabar spinach (Amunututu), African wild lettuce (Yanrin), bitter leaf, fluted pumpkin (Ugu), waterleaf and several other underutilized vegetables. According to the project’s own reporting, it reached more than 100 students, strengthened youth skills through seed distribution and cultivation, encouraged student-led documentation of food knowledge, and fostered intergenerational learning. In this way, Oyeyemi’s initiative illustrates the CAFF approach of making forgotten foods relevant to a new generation by combining education, cultivation, food culture, documentation and digital communication rather than treating their conservation as a purely agricultural activity.
Emmanuella Akumtu Cesar highlighted the nutritional potential of Bambara groundnut for young people’s diets. Her project, "Aboboe Revival: A School Farm for Nutrition, Skills and Indigenous Crop Heritage" is located in Korm M/A Basic School, a highly underserved school in Ghana's Eastern Region. This initiative showcases the transformative potential of school farms. Beyond producing food, the project promotes better nutrition, preserves indigenous crops and equips young people with valuable agricultural knowledge and practical skills. Many children depend on school meals as their primary source of daily nutrition, yet the budget allocated for school feeding is only about 2 cedis per child per meal—less than €0.20. Providing nutritious meals under such constraints is incredibly challenging. (see also: From Ghana to Benin: The Journey Begins)
Joel Teye shared work around indigenous bean species and their reintroduction to consumers in Ghana’s Krobo area. Farming organically within a biodiversity-rich ecosystem presents unique challenges, including adjusting planting schedules to accommodate wildlife migration patterns. To sustain his farms, Joel has also adopted an innovative approach. Alongside the indigenous beans, he cultivates Chinese vegetables for Chinese shops and consumers in the Tema area, creating a reliable income stream. According to him, with the challenge of youth unemployment and a large family, farming offers him the income he needs. His work demonstrates how entrepreneurship and cultural preservation can successfully go hand in hand. (see also: Collective Action on Forgotten Foods (CAFF) mission to Ghana)
Oluwaferanmi Olatilo presented her wider work on agrobiodiversity and Slow Food Nigeria’s Ark of Taste. Her activities reconnect Nigerian schoolchildren with indigenous foods, food traditions and agricultural biodiversity, responding to the disappearance of nutritious traditional foods and young people’s growing disconnection from food heritage.
Together, these examples demonstrated that young people are already becoming custodians, innovators and promoters of indigenous food heritage.
The resulting Youth Declaration on Forgotten Foods and the Future of Food Systems sends a strong message: preservation cannot mean keeping biodiversity only in seed banks, archives or museums. Food heritage must remain alive—grown, exchanged, prepared, eaten, valued and adapted. The declaration argues that innovation and heritage should reinforce rather than oppose one another, bringing traditional knowledge into dialogue with contemporary science, technology, creativity and enterprise. Above all, young people should be actors rather than spectators, participating in conservation, production, research, processing, entrepreneurship and decision-making.
Turning the declaration into action
The declaration identifies a practical agenda for governments, research and educational institutions, development partners, civil society, businesses and food movements.
It calls for indigenous foods to be integrated into education, school gardens and nutrition and culinary learning; for mentorship linking youth with elders, farmers, Indigenous and local communities, researchers, chefs and entrepreneurs; and for greater investment in community seed systems and neglected crop cultivation. It also emphasizes moving beyond conservation towards value creation, through processing technologies, food safety, packaging, certification and quality standards.
Markets and entrepreneurship are equally important. Public procurement, schools, restaurants and food businesses can create demand for forgotten foods, while young entrepreneurs need grants, finance, incubation, equipment, technical training and market connections. Festivals, digital storytelling and culinary events can make indigenous foods visible and desirable to younger consumers. At policy level, the declaration calls for food sovereignty, agroecology and indigenous foods to be incorporated across agriculture, nutrition, education, biodiversity, climate, trade and rural-development policies.
Cultivating Africa’s next generation of biodiversity leaders
Building on these priorities, CAFF is developing
“Cultivating Africa’s Next Generation of Biodiversity Leaders: Youth Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Collective Action for Forgotten Foods.”
The initiative is conceived as a leadership and innovation academy for young entrepreneurs, researchers, students, farmers and community advocates working to restore indigenous foods, biodiversity and food sovereignty. Its premise is that young people and women are already innovating around indigenous foods but need stronger access to mentorship, research partnerships, finance and leadership opportunities.
The 2026 CAFF Youth Challenge targeted young people aged 18–30 from Africa and the Caribbean, with projects to be implemented on university campuses or in semi-urban communities; selected participants receive mentorship, capacity building and a project grant.
The first five selected projects (for 2026) are:
Dalis Favour Apollos, Gwomshar Initiative. ROOTS & REVIVAL: A Youth-Led Forgotten Foods Initiative in Plateau State, North-Central Nigeria
Wisdom Kofi, with Philomena Blankson (Nutritionist, GIMPA) and Kwame Asante (Food Technologist). From Farm to Feast: Reviving Ghana's Forgotten Grains and Leafy Foods Among Urban Youths
Damaris Adhiambo Adoyo & Quinter Aoko Ogwonyo, School of Environmental Sciences, Department of Community Development, Pwani University. Revitalizing Seaweed as a Nutritional Powerhouse in Kwale County, Kenya
Enongene Beltin Epie, Youth Environmental & Community Development Advocate, Cameroon. ROOTS REVIVAL: Youth-Elder Action for Forgotten Foods and Community Resilience
Suzan Amoit, Makerere University, Uganda. Reviving Forgotten Foods: A Youth-Led Innovation for Orphan Crops
The CAFF Youth Challenge goes deliberately beyond conventional entrepreneurship training. It aims to equip young people as biodiversity champions and custodians of indigenous knowledge, while connecting them with universities, National Agricultural Research Systems, farmers’ organisations, investors, policymakers, civil society, development organisations and diaspora networks. Its objectives combine entrepreneurship with biodiversity stewardship, agroecological innovation, leadership, advocacy, indigenous knowledge, value addition and the creation of a continental network of Biodiversity Champions.
The the side events was structured around five complementary pillars:
Rediscover Africa’s biodiversity and indigenous knowledge;
Innovate through new products and value chains;
Lead through advocacy and leadership;
Collaborate across sectors;
Transform food systems through collective action on green entrepreneurship and indigenous-food business innovation to branding Africa’s biodiversity, linking research with community innovation, financing nature-based enterprises, accessing diaspora markets and building collective action for Africa’s food future.
From biodiversity conservation to economic opportunity
A particularly important dimension is connecting conservation with livelihoods. CAFF envisages young entrepreneurs learning how to develop sustainable enterprises from indigenous crops, improve processing and competitiveness, build compelling brands around Africa’s food heritage and connect with researchers and investors. Diaspora markets and international opportunities are also part of this approach, alongside financing through grants, investment, crowdfunding and other business-support mechanisms.
This reflects one of the strongest messages emerging from the youth declaration:
Food heritage must create opportunity. Conservation is unlikely to be sustainable if young people cannot see viable futures and decent livelihoods within it. Indigenous foods therefore need to connect biodiversity conservation with education, research, nutrition, entrepreneurship and markets.
A vision for 2030
The youth declaration ultimately looks towards 2030, envisioning indigenous African foods becoming integral to diets, economies and food systems rather than remaining at their margins. It imagines schools, farms, markets and restaurants where these foods are grown, taught, consumed and valued; young people leading enterprises and innovation; and research and policy recognizing their nutritional, ecological, cultural and economic potential. It also envisages Africa developing the capacity to process, certify and export safe, high-quality indigenous food products, generating livelihoods and economic opportunities for communities and young people.
The CAFF youth challenge provides a pathway for translating that vision into a longer-term movement.
Participants at the side event discussed practical entrepreneurial and leadership skills, stronger biodiversity stewardship, research and investment partnerships, improved value-addition and advocacy capabilities, business growth plans and membership in a regional Forgotten Foods Youth Network.
The longer-term ambition is a continental movement of young biodiversity champions capable of turning forgotten foods into engines of nutrition, biodiversity conservation, climate resilience, decent employment and food sovereignty.
The message emerging from Benin is therefore not simply about preserving what Africa risks losing. It is about repositioning indigenous foods as part of Africa’s future and equipping a generation capable of doing so. As the Youth Declaration concludes, the challenge is to move from remembering forgotten foods to rebuilding their place in food systems—allowing the knowledge of the past to inform the innovations of the future and enabling young people not merely to inherit food systems, but to transform them.
27–30 July. Abuja, Nigeria. Agricultural researchers, policymakers, farmers' organizations, private-sector leaders and development partners gathered for the 9th Africa Agriculture Science Week (AASW9) and the 10th Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) General Assembly.
22 July. GFAiR and AARINENA convened an online consultation on the Near East & North Africa (NENA) Global NARS Consortium (GNC) Chapter and the Agricultural Research Quality, Comparability and Impact Initiative (AR-QCI).
21 July. The EFARD/GFAiR/CAAE webinar examined the institutional conditions required to scale biopesticides and biofertilizers across Africa, Asia, and Europe
16 July. The very interesting webinar was organized by the Leading African Women in Food Fellowship (LAWFF) Alumni Network. It explored how Africa's indigenous foods and culinary traditions can become catalysts for transforming the continent's food systems by improving nutrition, preserving biodiversity, strengthening food sovereignty, and creating new economic opportunities
15 – 17 July. Entebbe. The Open-Source NUS Curriculum – Developing Course Assets for Asynchronous Online Courses Workshop is a three-day curriculum development workshop jointly organized by RUFORUM, GFAiR, and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT.
14 July. This webinar was organized in collaboration with AARINENA and the General Directorate of Agricultural Research and Policies (TAGEM), Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Türkiye. It brought together leading experts in radiation entomology and the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) to discuss the application of irradiation in Mediterranean fruit fly management programmes.
9 July. As African countries seek to strengthen food security, resilience and sustainable agrifood systems, the digitalization of seed systems is emerging as a critical enabler of transformation.
8 July 2026. Roots of resilience: How to tackle breadfruit and banana value chains challenges in the Pacific and Philippine. Hosted by AgriCord, this webinar showcased how farmers are utilizing indigenous knowledge and participatory research to combat climate change, crop diseases, and food insecurity.
8 - 10 July. This event combined the XXI Annual Technical Monitoring Workshop of FONTAGRO Projects with scientific presentations showcasing research and innovation across Latin America and the Caribbean.
8 - 10 July. Thirteenth Session of the Intergovernmental Technical Working Group on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
Forgotten Foods Gain Momentum in Global Indigenous Food Systems Debate: The global conversation on Indigenous Peoples' food systems is increasingly recognizing that Neglected and Underutilized Species (NUS) are far more than "forgotten crops"—they are fundamental building blocks of biodiversity, nutrition, cultural identity, and climate resilience.
8 July. This webinar marked the public launch of the report "Financing Nutrition at Scale: Capital Market Strategies for Investors" and brought its findings to life through a combination of author presentations and practitioner perspectives from those who have designed or operated the very instruments the report features.
6 July 2026. A delegation from Seed Savers Network Kenya, led by Daniel Wanjama, visited Andhra Pradesh, India, to study community-managed natural farming.
1–3 July. The EU-funded project CIRAWA has been collaborating with farmers and stakeholders in four West African countries (Cape Verde, Ghana, Senegal, and The Gambia) since 2023, to develop and share agroecological and nature-based solutions that promote sustainable and resilient farming.
1 July. This webinar focused on how nature-based pest management and biopesticides can strengthen climate-resilient agriculture across Asia and Africa, with particular attention to dryland farming systems and fragile mountain ecosystems.
30 June–2 July. The summit brought together governments, development banks, financial institutions, agribusinesses, farmer organizations, investors, research organizations, and development partners to explore how Africa can mobilize and better align finance for food systems transformation. The conference also receive support from other EU projects such as CANALLS, PrAEctiCe, and NATAE.
30 June - 1 July. Nairobi, Kenya. Agricultural leaders, researchers, farmers, entrepreneurs, policymakers and investors gathered for the inaugural DialogueNEXT Africa, organized by the World Food Prize Foundation under the inspiring theme "Born to Feed the Future."
East-West Seed transformed indigenous vegetable production across West Africa: The Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application, endowed by The Rockefeller Foundation, was presented to plant breeder Pamela Afokpe of East-West Seed for pioneering research that has transformed indigenous vegetable production across West Africa.
For more than 250 years, Black women have grown, harvested, cooked, researched, taught, organized, and nourished a nation often without recognition. "We Belong at the Table" is a cinematic musical tribute honoring the women whose hands shaped America's food system and whose legacy continues to inspire future generations.
A major constraint lies in the preparation of growing substrates. Most producers rely on steam or pressure-based sterilization, or hot water pasteurization, to reduce contamination before inoculation. While effective, these methods are capital intensive. They depend on boilers, fuel, electricity, and skilled operation, all of which increase the cost of production and limit expansion, particularly for small and medium-scale farmers.
22 July 2026. Cross regional collaborations - GFAiR-AARINENA Consultation on the NENA GNC Chapter and Agricultural Research Quality, Comparability and Impact initiative (AR-QCI)
GFAiR and AARINENA convened an online consultation on the Near East & North Africa (NENA) Global NARS Consortium (GNC).
The Global NARS Consortium (GNC) is an international alliance that brings together National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) to strengthen global collaboration, amplify the voice of national research institutions, and accelerate agricultural innovation for more resilient and sustainable food systems.
34 participants joined the conversation. Participation included national agricultural research centers, academies of agricultural sciences, universities, regional organizations, specialized research institutions and the GFAiR Secretariat. The composition combined senior institutional representatives and technical experts. Women represented 44.1% of recorded participants. Countries represented included UAE, Syria, Türkiye, Jordan, Morocco, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Uganda.
The consultation was organized through AARINENA as part of the regional operationalization of the Global NARS Consortium (GNC), while also engaging invited participants from other Regional Fora to support wider exchange and reflection.
The meeting presented two connected elements:
the NENA GNC Chapter and its draft Charter as a practical regional mechanism operating within and through AARINENA; and
the Agricultural Research Quality, Comparability and Impact Initiative (AR-QCI) - a flagship initiative that can connect countries, institutions and researchers around research quality, comparability of evidence and stronger pathways from research to practical impact.
The consultation showed how a Regional Forum can move from GNC governance discussion to practical regional operationalization. AARINENA provided the institutional platform, convening capacity and regional leadership, while the NENA Chapter and Charter offered a structured way to organize country engagement, regional synthesis and feedback to GNC processes.
The AR-QCI discussion added a practical thematic entry point. Participants recognized that issues of agricultural research quality, comparability of results, use of existing standards and demonstration of practical impact are shared across regions. This makes AR-QCI relevant beyond its initial development through AARINENA and the NENA GNC Chapter. The interest expressed by CACAARI participants and other invited regional representatives suggests that AR-QCI could, subject to further review and voluntary participation, develop into a broader interregional area of collaboration under the GNC.
Dr. Didem Kökden, senior International Relations Coordinator and expert at the General Directorate of Agricultural Research and Policies (TAGEM) Turkey: Agricultural ResearchQuality, Comparability and Impact (AR-QCI) Initiative
Co-organizers: The Food Bridge vzw, CFF Agroschooling Initiative, Ayonna , Global Forum on Agricultural Innovation and Research- GFAIR
This side event at the World Social Forum (WSF) 2026 (Cotonou, Benin), organized by the Collective Action on Forgotten Foods (CAFF), places young people at the centre of the solution.
Through inspiring examples, dialogue and collective reflection, participants will explore practical pathways for empowering the next generation to conserve, add value to, commercialize and promote forgotten foods while creating decent jobs, strengthening local economies and advancing food sovereignty.
The workshop aims to launch a growing
movement of young entrepreneurs and
advocates , who will shape the future of
Africa's indigenous food systems.
By investing in leadership, entrepreneurship,
innovation and partnerships today, the
initiative seeks to cultivate a generation
capable of transforming forgotten foods into
engines of nutrition, biodiversity
conservation, economic opportunity and
resilient food systems across Africa.
Sessions:
The Future of Forgotten Foods: Why Young People Matter - Exploring the opportunities presented by indigenous foods for employment, nutrition, biodiversity and climate resilience.
Becoming a Forgotten Foods Entrepreneur - Developing sustainable enterprises from indigenous crops.
Innovation for Indigenous Food Businesses - Creating new products, improving processing and increasing competitiveness.
