Announcement:Africa's role in solving the global food crisis

“Africa is the missing piece in the global food security puzzle. If Africa is seen as a problem today, it may very well hold the key to global food security tomorrow."–Pascal Lamy, Director General, WTO, speaking at Feeding the World summit in Geneva.

Africa has the greatest amount of arable land left fallow but very low current levels of trade in food. In contrary in less than 30 years Brazil turned itself from a food importer into one of the world’s breadbaskets. During those same 30 years Africa went from being a net food-exporting continent to being a net food importer.

15-16/11/2012. Africa's role in solving the global food crisis. Bringing policy-makers together with agribusiness, donors, farmer organisations and civil society FEEDING THE WORLD, a conference of the Economist, will discuss what Africa needs in order to reproduce the Brazilian miracle.

Debate topics:

• What government policies will help Africa exploit its latent agricultural potential, enabling the development of vibrant markets in rice, maize, soy beans etc? 
• How can farmers be supported with the skills, financing and access to markets that they need? 
• How can new technologies boost yields and solve critical nutrition needs?