2nd Africa Food Security & Adaptation Conference

Umezuruike Linus Opara, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

30-31 July 2015. Nairobi. 2nd Africa Food Security & Adaptation Conference. UNEP in collaboration with the African Union Commission (AUC) and other partners convened the 2nd Ecosystems Based Adaptation for Food Security Conference to deliberate the wide scale implementation of a transformative strategy to enhance agricultural productivity in Africa that is both economically and environmentally sustainable.

The conference converged over 1200 delegates – experts in policy, the public and private sector, representatives of regional economic communities, UN agencies, academia, research think tanks, civil society, youth organizations, NGOs, students and the general public from across Africa and the globe.

The express mandate of this congregation was to deliberate and adopt transformative instruments toward implementing a transformative strategy for upscaling EBA-driven agriculture and its value chains across the entire continent, to ensure not only food security, but also economic and environmental benefits toward solving Africa’s nexus challenges of food insecurity, poverty, youth unemployment, environmental degradation and climate change. This innovative and participatory approach, premised on decentralization and generating continental ownership & buy-in holds great promise of progress in solving the continents food & livelihood security challenges, climate resilience as well as achievement of the proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) toward sustainable and inclusive economic growth in Africa.

From L-R: Alice Kaudia, Environment Secretary, Ministry of Environment, Kenya, and Chair of the Conference; Cosmas Ochieng, Executive Director, African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS); Wilbur Ottichillo, MP Kenya National Assembly; Richard Munang, Coordinator, Africa Regional Climate Change Programme at the UNEP Regional Office for Africa (UNEP/ROA); Michael O’Brien-Onyeka, Executive Director, Greenpeace Africa; and Daniel Gad, Board Chairman, Ethiopian Horticulture Cooperative

To this end, the conference deliberations were organized around key agents that can transform dominant agricultural development paradigms towards EBA-driven agriculture. This was tackled under the following core themes:

• harnessing EBA to protect and restore Africa’s ecosystems and contribute to reduction in

  

  Conference outcomes

  postharvest losses; 
• building scalable and inclusive business models for EBA-driven agriculture that can create opportunities across the entire agricultural value chain; 
• identifying scalable and innovative financing models for EBA-driven agriculture to stimulate growth, job creation and value chain partnerships in Africa; 
• understanding the role of south-south cooperation in harnessing EBA for food security in Africa; 
• identifying and harnessing the role of education, ICTs and data in transforming EBA agriculture in Africa; 
• identifying and harnessing the role of youth and women in upscaling EBA agriculture; 
• identifying enabling policies and legislation that will incentivize countries to invest in agriculture, soil conservation and EBA; 
• and developing strategies to incentivize private sector involvement in EBA-driven agriculture for increased capital mobilization and competitiveness.

EBAFOSC 2 Resources and outcomes

• EBAFOSC 2 Website
• EBAFOSC 2 Programme
• EBAFOSC 2 Background and Context
• Constitution of the Ecosystem-based Adaptation for Food Security Assembly (EBAFOSA)
• Nairobi Action Agenda
• The IISD ENB+ summary report of #EBAFOSC 2