Ministerial Conference and 4th Agritec Africa Exhibition

Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Willy Bet

14-16 June 2017. Nairobi. This conference focused on “Catalyzing Agricultural Transformation for Inclusive Growth” under the theme “Harnessing the demographic dividend through investment in food and nutrition data.”

The Conference was co-convened by the Government of Kenya, Radeecal Communications and GODAN Secretariat. The conference was attended by some 200 participants, led by Ministers for Agriculture from 100 countries, private sector, academia, think-tanks, civil society, youth organisations, research networks and development practitioners, the United Nations and multilateral institutions especially the African Development Bank (AfDB), UN Economic Commissions for Africa, Asia and Latin America, the African Union Commission, Africa’s Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and international organizations.

The Ministerial conference mobilized high level political support to ensure availability, accessibility and usability of data for agricultural planning and decision making in the global south.

More specifically, the conference seeked to:

1. Increase financial, human and technological capacities in the global south for agriculture and nutrition data;
2. Improve coordination of data for agriculture and nutrition across governments, private sector, and academia in the global south;
3. Harmonize policies that improve collection, coordination, use, dissemination of agriculture and nutrition data;
4. Provide a platform for peer-learning, co-creation and sharing of expertise/ practices on proven success on the use of quality data and standards for agriculture and nutrition;
5. Create opportunities for the adoption of youth driven agricultural innovations within the public sector to catalyse employment and wealth creation.
6. Facilitate networking and to showcase proven initiatives on open data for agricultural transformation.

The second Ministerial conference on Global Open Data for Agric and Nutrition will be hosted by Uganda in 2018