Clean Energy to Nourish a Continent: Unlocking renewable power for Africa’s food systems

Clean Energy to Nourish a Continent: Unlocking renewable power for Africa’s food systems, a white paper co-authored with GAIN and SNV, looks at how renewable energy can be a vehicle for growth in the African food processing sector. 

Read the executive summary HERE and the full report HERE.

Fermentation: from evidence to scale

Fermentation: An Ancient Solution to Modern Challenges, published by Sight and Life in March 2025. CIFF supported the publication. 100 pp.

The report examines traditional food fermentation as a potentially powerful solution for nutrition, food security, livelihoods, and environmental challenges, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Its main findings include:

• Improved nutrition: Fermentation can improve mineral bioavailability and protein digestibility while reducing anti-nutritional compounds.
• Food preservation: Fermentation can extend shelf life, helping reduce food loss and improve food availability where refrigeration and storage are limited.
• Food safety: Certain fermentation processes can inhibit harmful microorganisms and improve the safety of foods.
• Climate and sustainability: Fermentation is generally an energy-efficient preservation method and can contribute to reducing food waste.
• Women and livelihoods: Traditional fermentation is frequently carried out by women at household or small-business level, so scaling it could create income opportunities and strengthen women's economic participation.
• Local food systems: The report emphasizes building on indigenous knowledge and locally available foods rather than relying exclusively on imported technologies.
• Scaling challenges: Major barriers include inconsistent fermentation processes, food-safety concerns, limited scientific evidence, lack of standards and regulation, consumer acceptance, and difficulties moving from household production to commercial scale.

1 September 2026. Organized by: Sight and

Life, CIFF Sight and Life (SAL) work on fermentation. This included the first-of-its-kind Special Report on Fermentation, and a new programme –Foundations for Scaling Fermented Foods in Nigeria and Ethiopia– generating country-level evidence to guide safe, effective scaleup of fermented foods across Africa. 

SAL launched the report and programme to spotlight fermentation's potential to combat malnutrition, improve livelihoods and reduce food's climate impact. 

This session was the flagship to position fermentation on the continental agenda and anchor the evidence base for Ethiopia's national roadmap. 

Session objectives 

1. Launch the Special Report on Fermentation to a high-level, continental audience. 
2. Position fermentation on the African food-systems agenda as a climate-smart, nutrition-sensitive solution strengthening local livelihoods - especially for women producers. 
3. Inspire collaboration: driving innovation, attracting investment, and supporting evidence-informed policy on fermented foods

Speakers 

1. Petrida Paul Moderator; Executive Communications Coordinator Sight and Life
2. Elvis Gakuba Africa Director Sight and Life
3. Kesso Gabrielle van Zutphen-Küffer Scientific Director Sight and Life
4. Dr. Elmer Ametefe Senior Lecturer University of Ghana
5. Dr. Zouera Youssoufou Managing Director & CEO Aliko Dangote Foundation
6. H.E. Dr. Telesphore Ndabamenye Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources Government of Rwanda
7. H.E. Demeke Mekonnen Hassen Former Deputy Prime Minister of Ethiopia; Founder & Board Chairperson Yadam Foundation
8. H.E. Senator Abubakar Kyari, CON Honourable Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, Nigeria
9. H.E. Aurélie Royet-Gounin French Ambassador to Rwanda French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs / Embassy of France in Rwanda
10. Chef Dieuveil Malonga (see picture)

Hodari Foundation: Building a Future Through Innovation, Independence and Inclusion

The HODARI Foundation operates as a refugee-led nonprofit within the Kyaka II Refugee Settlement in Southwestern Uganda to assist marginalized groups. Its core focus areas include enterprise development, agriculture, and community protection aimed at fostering sustainable livelihoods and empowerment.


Over the past five years, we have worked alongside communities to create opportunities, strengthen resilience, and promote sustainable solutions—reaching *more than 6,310 people of concern* through locally led initiatives.

See video https://youtu.be/VFUPuEZLVos?si=mS14h3jvwMiw3fjb

Hodari Foundation is built around a simple but powerful belief: people and communities can thrive when they have access to the right opportunities and support.

The organisation’s work, as is centred on responding to challenges such as food insecurity, climate-related pressures and the need for sustainable livelihoods. Rather than focusing only on short-term assistance, Hodari seeks to develop practical solutions that can create lasting impact.

Its approach is reflected in its three guiding principles:

• Innovation – finding creative and practical ways to address community challenges.
• Independence – helping people develop skills, income and opportunities that enable greater self-reliance.
• Inclusion – ensuring that people and communities are not left behind.

Turning Challenges Into Opportunities

Many communities face interconnected challenges. Limited employment opportunities can contribute to poverty, while food insecurity and environmental pressures can make it even harder for families to build stable lives.

Hodari Foundation's approach is to respond to these challenges through sustainable, community-focused initiatives. Its work combines social impact with enterprise, creating opportunities that can contribute to both individual independence and wider community development.

Permaculture and sustainable food systems

Hodari identifies food insecurity and climate change among the challenges it wants to address. A permaculture approach fits naturally with this goal because it emphasises:

• growing food sustainably using local resources;
• improving soil and biodiversity;
• reducing dependence on expensive external inputs;
• building resilient local food systems; and
• creating livelihoods alongside food production.

Indigenous and local foods

Food-related products, include Mushroom Flour, Composite Porridge, Mushroom Coffee, Mushroom - Hibiscus Juice. They provide a way of bringing traditional foods into modern markets while creating income for producers.

Indigenous food systems often contain knowledge about locally adapted crops, ecological conditions and sustainable cultivation practices.

Rather than treating food insecurity only as a problem requiring food distribution, a sustainable food-system model seeks to enable communities to grow, process, sell and consume their own food.

Nourishing You Naturally: How a Small Ghanaian Enterprise Is Turning Local Crops into Nutritious Foods

In Bolgatanga-Soe in Ghana’s Upper East Region, an inspiring food enterprise is demonstrating what can happen when local agricultural resources are transformed into convenient, marketable and nutritious foods.

Nutribrown Enterprise, operating near the Catholic Church in Bolgatanga-Soe, presents itself with a simple but powerful message: “Nourishing You Naturally.” Its product range, shown in the accompanying brochure, brings together grains, seeds and fruits in powdered and cereal-based products designed for both adults and children above six months.

The story of Nutribrown is more than a story about cereal. It is a story about crop diversity, local value addition and the potential of African food systems to create nutritious products from locally available resources.

From local crops to finished products

The enterprise's GrainGlow range includes products made with ingredients such as sesame seeds, tiger nuts, legumes, coconut, dates, cinnamon and baobab fruit.

Among the products featured are:

• GrainGlow Sesame Seeds
• GrainGlow Cereal Tiger Nut Mix – Tombrown
• GrainGlow Cereal Legume Mix Powder with Cinnamon
• GrainGlow Cereal Legume Mix Powder with Coconut
• GrainGlow Cereal Legume Mix Powder with Coconut & Dates
• Glow Baobab Fruit Powder

This is precisely the kind of value addition that can make agricultural diversification economically meaningful.

Instead of selling crops only as raw commodities, entrepreneurs can process them into products with greater shelf value, convenience and market appeal. The result can potentially create opportunities at several points along the value chain—from farmers producing the raw materials to processors, packaging businesses, distributors and retailers.

A model worth scaling

What makes enterprises such as Nutribrown particularly interesting is their potential to demonstrate a different model of African agricultural development.

For decades, the conversation has often focused on increasing production of major commodities. That remains important, but there is another question we need to ask:

What can we do with the crops we already have?

Can we process them locally?

Can we develop better products?

Can we build brands around African ingredients?

Can farmers receive a larger share of the value created?

Can young entrepreneurs build businesses around food processing?

Can indigenous and underutilized crops become commercially attractive while retaining their cultural significance?

Nutribrown offers one small but tangible example of what this approach can look like.

• From Bolgatanga to the wider African food system
• The location is significant.
• The Upper East Region has a long agricultural tradition, but like many parts of Africa, producers and entrepreneurs face challenges associated with markets, processing capacity, financing and access to technology.

Small and medium-sized food enterprises can help bridge some of these gaps.

When local entrepreneurs buy agricultural products, process them and sell finished foods, agriculture becomes connected to a much broader economic ecosystem.

The opportunity extends beyond one enterprise. Imagine networks of businesses producing flours, cereals, snacks, beverages and other foods from millet, sorghum, legumes, sesame, baobab, tiger nuts and other locally adapted crops.

That is how crop diversity can become not only a nutritional asset, but also an economic asset.

The bigger message: African solutions from African resources

The Nutribrown story also resonates strongly with the emerging conversation around initiatives such as AfricaVeg, led by the World Vegetable Center.

Nutribrown represents the downstream end of that same philosophy: turning agricultural diversity into products that can reach consumers.

The future of African food systems will require both sides of the equation.

• We need scientists and breeders developing better crops.
• We need farmers producing them.
• We need entrepreneurs processing them.
• We need investors financing them.
• And we need consumers creating demand for them.

From “Nourishing You Naturally” to “Growing Africa's Food Future”

The Nutribrown brochure tells a much bigger story.

It shows what is possible when local ingredients meet entrepreneurship and value addition.

From sesame seeds to tiger nuts, legumes, coconut, dates and baobab, the products demonstrate that Africa's food future does not have to be built exclusively around imported ingredients or a narrow range of staple crops.

There is enormous potential in the diversity already present across African farms, landscapes and food cultures.

The challenge—and the opportunity—is to build the research, finance, processing, branding and market systems that allow entrepreneurs like Nutribrown to take that diversity from farm to factory, from factory to market, and ultimately from market to the household table.

That is what a truly diversified African food system could look like: local crops, local entrepreneurs, local value addition—and healthier, more resilient food economies.

Nourishing people naturally may begin with a product on a shelf. But transforming Africa's food system begins with recognizing the value of what is already growing in its fields.

AfricaVeg: Turning Africa’s Vegetable Diversity into a New Engine for Food, Nutrition and Investment

1 September 2026. Interview with 

• Dr. Gabriel Rugalema — Regional Director, WorldVeg. 

https://youtu.be/653wzYV_gzs?si=OKEh-VmoUbaSWLRv

See his testimony about innovation in amaranth during the panel Innovation Hub: Investing in Diverse Crops discussion 

 https://youtu.be/dqcXkJAfs-s?si=iG2-wHZ8YZOOkCsC

Africa’s vegetable sector is entering an important new phase. Across the continent, vegetables are increasingly being recognized not simply as a source of food, but as a pathway to better nutrition, climate resilience, employment, entrepreneurship and stronger agricultural economies.

At the center of this emerging opportunity is AfricaVeg, a new public–private initiative led by the World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) to strengthen Africa’s vegetable breeding and seed innovation ecosystem.

The initiative was launched at the Africa Food Systems Forum 2026 in Kigali, Rwanda, under the theme “African Seeds, African Solutions.” Its central proposition is straightforward: Africa needs vegetable varieties that are developed for African farmers, African environments and African markets—and it needs stronger local seed businesses and research institutions capable of delivering those varieties at scale.

Why vegetables matter for Africa

Africa has enormous vegetable diversity, including traditional and indigenous crops such as amaranth, African eggplant, okra, jute mallow, spider plant and roselle.

Many of these crops are nutritionally rich, adapted to local climates and important to household diets and livelihoods. Yet their potential remains underdeveloped. In many countries, farmers face limited access to quality seed, improved varieties, technical knowledge and reliable markets.

WorldVeg's work reflects a broader understanding of food-system transformation: improving diets is not only about producing more calories. It is also about increasing the diversity, nutritional quality and resilience of what people grow and eat.

The Center describes its mission as contributing to healthier lives and more resilient livelihoods through greater diversity in what we grow and eat. Its work spans climate resilience, healthy diets, vegetable biodiversity, economic empowerment, urban food systems, and food safety and loss reduction. 

From better varieties to better businesses

One of the most interesting aspects of AfricaVeg is that it recognizes that breeding a good vegetable variety is only the beginning.

A new variety must move from the laboratory and research station into a seed company, then to farmers, markets and ultimately consumers. 

That requires a functioning ecosystem connecting:

• Public agricultural research institutions
• Universities and scientists
• Vegetable breeders
• African seed companies
• Farmers and farmer organizations
• Investors
• Markets and food businesses
• Regional and continental agricultural organizations

This “last mile” between scientific innovation and farmers is critical. WorldVeg has emphasized that AfricaVeg is designed to strengthen precisely this pathway by connecting breeding, seed systems, seed companies, markets and investment.

The initiative therefore represents a shift from thinking about vegetable breeding as an isolated research activity toward seeing it as an innovation and investment ecosystem.

The forgotten opportunity: African vegetables

AfricaVeg is arriving at a time when there is growing recognition of the value of traditional African vegetables.

These crops have sometimes been overlooked by formal agricultural research and commercial seed systems despite their nutritional and environmental potential.

WorldVeg and its partners are now working to conserve and make better use of this biodiversity. More than 17,000 accessions have been collected under the African Vegetable Biodiversity Rescue Plan, with most stored in Africa's Vegetable Genebank in Arusha, Tanzania, and more than 5,000 backed up in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. 

The challenge is therefore no longer simply to preserve diversity. It is to turn diversity into opportunity.

That means developing varieties farmers want to grow, seed companies can commercialize, consumers want to eat, and investors can support.

AFS Forum 2026 — Innovation Hub: Investing in Diverse Crops

1 September 2026. 10:00 AM–12:00. Innovation Hub: Investing in Diverse Crops

The session focused on how investment in diverse, underutilized and climate-resilient crops can strengthen Africa’s food systems. It moves beyond dependence on major staples such as maize, wheat and rice and examines opportunities around indigenous, nutritious and high-value crops.

Key areas of discussion included:

• Financing and investment opportunities for diverse crops.
• Developing markets and strengthening value chains.
• Research, innovation and improved seed systems.
• Value addition and commercialization.
• Policies and partnerships needed to scale diversified agriculture.
• How crop diversification can improve food and nutrition security, farmer incomes, biodiversity and climate resilience. 

Bright Lights

• Josephine Okot — CEO, Victoria Seeds
• Rokiatou Traore — Founder & Executive Manager, Herou Alliance
• Zainab Lawal Gwadabe — CEO, Seed Pro Africa. 

Panel 1 — Innovating for Resilient and

Diverse Food Systems

• Dr. Jerry Asalma Nboyine — Senior Research Scientist & Entomologist, CSIR-SARI, Ghana
• Dr. Mercy Diebiru-Ojo — Assistant Specialist, Cassava Seed Systems; Africa Food Prize Winner 2024
• Dr. Rufaro Madakadze — Lead, Capacity Building & Technical Support, CESSA/AGRA
• Dr. Gabriel Rugalema — Regional Director, WorldVeg. See his testimony about innovation in amaranth https://youtu.be/dqcXkJAfs-s?si=iG2-wHZ8YZOOkCsC

Panel 2 — Unlocking Markets and Investment for Diverse Crops

• Innocent Namuhoranye — Chairman & CEO, National Seed Association of Rwanda
• Jean Claude Rubyogo — PABRA Director & Seed Systems Specialist, PABRA/CIAT
• Ayodeji Balogun — CEO, AFEX
• Andile Mnguni — Executive Director, ProVeg South Africa

This was an investment-focused session about turning Africa’s crop diversity into commercial opportunities, resilient food systems and better livelihoods, with investors, researchers, seed-sector leaders and agribusiness executives discussed how to move from promising crops to scalable markets.