The new Kenyan government faces a complex domestic and global environment. Rapid population growth and urbanization with limited structural transformation present major challenges to Kenya’s ability to achieve food security for all and become a higher-middle-income country in the medium term.  If recent economic trends are any indication, the country risks not having enough jobs to support the projected increase in the labor force. Another key consideration for the Kenyan government is how to feed the country’s rapidly growing population in an increasingly volatile global environment complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

The government is widely expected to address these challenges with a new set of policies and programs as part of its Bottom Up Economic Plan. This seminar will discuss results from an ongoing effort by KIPPRA and CGIAR’s National Policies and Strategies Initiative to model the expected impacts of implementing the plan on key socioeconomic outcomes such as the food system, diets, jobs, poverty, and inequality. To highlight the important links between the plan and food systems transformation, the seminar will also present recommendations from a new policy brief entitled “Transforming Food Systems in Kenya for a New Era of Growth and Prosperity.”

Welcoming remarks

• Rose Ngugi, Executive Director, KIPPRA
• Channing Arndt, Senior Director, Transformation Strategies, CGIAR and Director, Environment and Production Technology Division, IFPRI

Keynote address 

• Njuguna Ndung’u, Cabinet Secretary, National Treasury and Economic Planning (Invited)
• Mithika Linturi, Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development (Invited)

Estimated impacts of implementing the Bottom Up Economic Plan on food systems and social outcomes

• KIPPRA/IFPRI

Transforming food systems in Kenya: Policy options for a new era of growth and prosperity

• Joseph Karugia, Principal Scientist – Agricultural Economist and Policy Expert, ILRI/CGIAR

Panel discussion and reflections on the study  

Q&A

Closing remarks

• Clemens Breisinger, IFPRI Country Program Leader & Lead, CGIAR Initiative on National Policies and Strategies
• Rose Ngugi, Executive Director, KIPPRA

Join USAID’s Private Sector Engagement Secretariat and USAID’s Rwanda and Bangladesh Missions on Thursday, October 27, 2022, at 9:30 a.m. ET to learn about promising practices for engaging the private sector to advance and sustain inclusive, agriculture-led economic growth and a well-nourished population, especially among women and children.

This webinar will feature a panel of practitioners to discuss how the private sector can supplement public sector interventions in the agricultural sector, as well as highlight private sector partnerships in Rwanda and Bangladesh with a special focus on nutrition. 

The Feed the Future Rwanda Orora Wihaze activity, supported by USAID/Rwanda, works with local partners and private sector actors in the country to sustainably increase the availability, access, and consumption of animal-sourced foods through the development of a profitable market. The Feed the Future Bangladesh Nutrition Activity, supported by USAID/Bangladesh, works with private sector partners to empower and support market and community actors to address underlying causes of malnutrition in the country.

Join this webinar to learn more!

Unprecedented extreme weather events linked to climate change are contributing to the current global food and energy price crisis and severely impacting livelihoods and food and nutrition security. In this context, expectations are high for the 27th Conference of the Parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) taking place under the Presidency of the Arab Republic of Egypt.

As a major agricultural producer in a highly climate-stressed region, Egypt brings a unique perspective to food system resilience. This presentation will highlight the Egyptian Presidency’s strategic objectives on climate change and food systems for COP27 and the climate challenges facing Egypt’s food system. CGIAR’s team will showcase its new global research portfolio on climate change and outline its objectives for COP27.

A panel of distinguished speakers will comment on Egypt’s priorities for COP27, actions specific to Egypt’s agrifood sector, and CGIAR’s research portfolio and plans for COP27.

Opening Remarks

• Michael Baum, Deputy Director General, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA)

Egyptian Presidency COP27: Vision and Key Planned Outcomes from COP27 in the Agriculture and Food Systems space

• H.E. Ambassador Ayman Tharwat, Minister Plenipotentiary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Egypt

Climate Change Challenges Facing Egypt's Food System

• Claudia Ringler, Deputy Director of Environment and Production Technology Division, IFPRI

The CGIAR Climate Change Research Portfolio

• Johan Swinnen, Managing Director, Systems Transformation, CGIAR and Director General, IFPRI

CGIAR SLT Rep on CGIAR's COP27 objectives and Food Pavilion

• Juan Lucas Restrepo, Director General, Alliance Bioversity-CIAT

Reflections based on the 2022 Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC

• Aditi Mukherji, Principal Researcher, IWMI-IPCC

Implementing climate change goals on the ground in Africa

• Reem Abdel Meguid, Chairperson of the Board of Trustees: The association for sustainable quality of living (Estidama) & Lead of the Africa Grows Green Initiative – COP27

USAID Climate change priorities and COP27

• Kathleen Kirsch, Climate Integration Lead, Office of Economic Growth, USAID/Egypt

Closing Remarks

• Michael Baum, Deputy Director General, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA)

Moderator

• Roula Majdalani, Climate Change Advisor, ICARDA

The world is facing a potential food crisis worse than any seen since World War II. With Russia’s devastating war on Ukraine, a historic drought and heat wave in China, and an irregular monsoon season in South Asia, food supplies from several of the world’s largest granaries are highly uncertain and concerning. Global hunger has been rising since 2015, and the number of people facing acute, crisis-level food insecurity has doubled to well over 200 million. Famine is threatening the lives of large populations in the Horn of Africa, Yemen, and South Sudan. Already, climate change is compounding the global risks to food security.

In response to this “code red for global food systems,” the world community is beginning to coalesce around several action areas set forth by the Declaration of Leaders’ Summit on Global Food Security, the Global Alliance for Food Security (GAFS) convened by the G7 Development Ministers, and the French Initiative for an International Food and Agriculture Resilience Mission (FARM), among others. At the G20 Agriculture Ministers’ Meeting, held in Bali on September 27th, serious concerns were expressed about the global food security situation, but members stopped short of announcing concrete, concerted efforts to address the crisis. This may still come at the joint G20 Agriculture and Finance Ministers’ meeting on October 11, 2022.

What can the G20 do to help, and should it play a role in enhancing, strengthening, and coordinating initiatives to help avoid a potential food catastrophe and prevent future threats by making food systems resilient and sustainable?

This seminar will address these questions and consider the proposals made by the Task Force on Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture of the Think20 (T20).

What can the G20 do to address the global food security crisis? 

• Johan Swinnen, Managing Director, Systems Transformation, CGIAR and Director General, IFPRI

Panel Discussion

• Godfrey Bahiigwa, Director of Agriculture and Rural Development, African Union Commission
• Eugenio Diaz-Bonilla, IICA Visiting Fellow, IFPRI
• Damayanti Buchori, Lead Co-chair, Task Force Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture T20 
• Arif Husain, Chief Economist, World Food Program (WFP) 
• Mari Pangestu, Managing Director World Bank 

Q&A

Closing Remarks

• Rob Vos, Director of Markets, Trade and Institutions Division, IFPRI

Moderator

• Valeria Piñeiro, Acting Head of the Latin American region & Senior Research Coordinator, IFPRI

The Russian war in Ukraine is hitting the global food supply chain and impacting prices of raw material (largely wheat), fertilizer, and fuel, which limit production, increase costs and depress sales. This has shaped manufacturers’ supply chain strategies and has greatly affected Africa’s food processing industry, despite being far from the conflict zone.

The session under the Alliance for Inclusive and Nutritious Food Processing (AINFP) Webinar series will bring together food processors, partners, and food industry experts from the region to engage and share experiences and opportunities in building resilience as a continent against world crises. 

Learn more about the AINFP program at www.ainfp.org and click here for more information about the event.

Africa’s agricultural trade capacity and policy are increasingly important as global volatility in agriculture and fertilizer markets is increasing risks for many importing and exporting countries. The 2022 edition of the Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor 2022 (AATM), a flagship of IFPRI and AKADEMIYA2063, analyzes short- and long-term trends and drivers of African agricultural trade flows, including regional policies and the role of global markets. Chapters in this year’s report examine the impact of the Russia-Ukraine War, the potential of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to contribute to growth, the development of value chains for processed products and for coffee, tea, and cocoa, as well as the role of intraregional trade in the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), and makes recommendations for promoting the development of African trade.

Speakers and discussants will review the report’s key findings and implications for next steps.

Master of Ceremony

• Layih Butake, Director of Communication and Outreach, AKADEMIYA2063

Introductory Remarks

• Johan Swinnen, Global Director, CGIAR Systems Transformation Science Group & Director General, IFPRI
• Hon. Dr. Jean Chrysostome Ngabitsinze, Minister of Trade and Industry, Republic of Rwanda
• H.E. Ambassador Leonel Josefa Sacko, Commissioner, Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy, and Sustainable Environment (AUC- DARBE) (invited)

Main Findings of the 2022 AATM report

• Ousmane Badiane, Executive Chairperson, AKADEMIYA2063, Rwanda

AATM 2022 Video

Panel presentation of the 2022 AATM report and discussion

• Antoine Bouët, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
• Sunday Pierre Odjo, Deputy Director, Knowledge Systems, AKADEMIYA2063
• Chahir Zaki, Associate professor, Economics Department, Faculty of Economics and Political Science (FEPS), Cairo University

Discussants

• Jacob Kotcho, Directeur du Marché Commun, Economic Community of Central African States
• Joseph Larrose, Director of Development, Touton
• Christiane Wolff, Counselor, World Trade Organization

Q&A with virtual audience

Closing Remarks

• Chris Shepherd-Pratt, Policy Chief, Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) (invited)

Moderator

• Heike Hoeffler, Project Lead, Agricultural Trade, Agribusiness, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), Germany (invited)

The conflict in Ukraine is having widespread deleterious impacts on the economies and food systems of many low- and middle-income countries. Rising prices for food, fuel, and fertilizer have raised pressing concerns about food security and poverty. To better understand the risks in specific countries, IFPRI researchers have modeled the impacts of prices of the fuel, fertilizer, and food price shocks on GDP, employment, poverty, hunger, and diet quality in 19 countries in Africa and Asia, and examined the relative cost effectiveness of different policy interventions.

Please join us for a presentation of this work and a discussion on how policymakers and other key actors are addressing the challenges created by this crisis in specific countries.

IFPRI’s modeling work on the impacts of the Ukraine crisis is supported by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and benefitted from working with two CGIAR’s research initiatives: Foresight and Metrics and National Policies and Strategies.

This is the sixth event in an IFPRI seminar series on Food and Fertilizer Price Trends: Impacts on global food security.

Introduction

• Johan Swinnen, Global Director, CGIAR Systems Transformation Science Group & Director General, IFPRI 

Overview of methodology and key results of IFPRI’s impact and policy response analysis

• Xinshen Diao, Deputy Division Director, Development Strategy and Governance Division, IFPRI
• James Thurlow, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI

Panel

Key Considerations for Nigeria

• Bedru Balana, Research Fellow, IFPRI
• Sugra Mahmood, Deputy Director, Irrigation agriculture and crop development, Federal Department of Agriculture, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD)
• Surendra Srivastava, Head, Fertilizer Marketing, Indorama Eleme Fertilizers and Chemicals Ltd., Abuja, Nigeria

Key Considerations for Egypt

• Mahmoud El Bassiouny, Executive Director, The Food Industries Chamber in the Federation of Egyptian Industries (FEI)
• Fatma El Hamalawy, Lecturer at the Institute of National Planning
• Mariam Raouf, Senior Research Associate, IFPRI

Key Considerations for Kenya

• Anthony Kioko, Chief Executive Officer, Cereal Growers Association
• Lucy Njenga, Director of Policy, Research and Regulations, State Dept. for Crops Dev. and Agric. Research, Ministry of Agriculture Livestock Fisheries and Cooperatives (MoAL&C), Kenya
• Lensa Omune, Research Officer, IFPRI

Closing Remarks

• Chris Hillbruner, Division Chief, Analysis and Learning Office of Policy, Analysis, and Engagement Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) 

Moderator

• Charlotte Hebebrand, Director of Communications and Public Affairs, IFPRI 

African smallholders face many risks and uncertainty in the face of climate change and other shocks. Economic, health and environmental crises exacerbate resilience; take for example the COVID-19 pandemic and the escalating food and fertilizer prices resulting from the conflict in Ukraine. The unavailability and nearly four-fold price increase of fertilizer will affect food production and prices in Africa. Risk-proof and productivity enhancing practices, skills and technologies provided by agricultural extension are essential to cope with these challenges, enabling smallholders to produce food and maintain livelihoods while sustaining natural resources. Such complex challenges require multidimensional approaches with pluralistic actors and multiple methods, particularly digitalization.

In Africa, there are countries with well-developed public extension systems with high staff numbers, such as Ethiopia, and others with smaller numbers of public agents where private services complement the public system, such as Uganda. Most countries are somewhere in between, but for countries with limited government resources, the use of the private sector and civil society to supplement the public system and connect to markets becomes even more important.

Digital tools are particularly important for extension, for decision-making and to connect diverse actors and facilitate access to input/output markets, improved technologies, extension services/information, finance, and private sector provision. Digital technology applications are increasingly integrated in extension systems to support farmers to increase productivity and incomes, expand opportunities and increase resilience by adopting better suited varieties, managing pests and disease, adapting to climate change, obtaining inputs, and accessing financial services. Digitalization of agricultural extension is an important tool to reach farmers with services and information to accelerate agricultural transformation in Africa to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Increasing investment in digital technologies to help small-scale farmers will bring significant benefits long after the supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and Ukraine crisis has passed.

Thus, strengthening multidimensional and digitally-enabled agricultural extension is a key means to strengthen resilience of smallholder farmers in Africa. This symposium will highlight trends, good practices, and recommendations for multidimensional, digitally-enables agricultural extension.

IFPRI Participants

• Kristin Davis, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
• David Laborde Debucquet, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
• Charlotte Hebebrand, Director of Communications and Public Affairs, IFPRI
• Johan Swinnen, Global Director, CGIAR Systems Transformation Science Group & Director General, IFPRI

During the pandemic’s first year, a global task force of food safety experts was created using a “train the trainer” approach to provide risk mitigation outreach for the food system workforce in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Kenya, Nepal, and Senegal. Through live, online office hours and downloadable, translated resources, the team countered misinformation and shared best practices to keep food businesses open. The global food system continues to face challenges from conflict, climate change, and other disruptions. This webinar, hosted by the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Safety, will explore best practices for responding to food safety challenges and lessons learned by the coronavirus task force.

Please click here for more information.

Unhealthy diets are a critical global concern, but current dietary assessment methods are costly and challenging to implement. Mobile-phone-based interventions show some promise for improving nutrition data collection and dietary quality, especially for adolescents in low- and middle-income countries.

The Nudging for Good project has developed a new artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted mobile phone application, the Plant Village Food Recognition Assistance and Nudging Insights (FRANI). This app can recognize foods, track food-group consumption, provide diet-related statistics, and nudge users to improve food consumption. Validation of FRANI for dietary assessment in adolescent girls in Ghana and Viet Nam showed it performs as well or better than the standard multi-pass 24-hour recall method, highlighting its potential to address critical data gaps and provide a platform for interventions to improve diet quality.

This seminar will launch the FRANI app and discuss the results of new dietary assessment technologies and perspectives on the way forward for technology-assisted diet assessment.

Nudging for Good is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the International Food Policy Research Institute, Plant Village at Penn State University, the University of Ghana, and the National Institute of Nutrition and Thai Nguyen National Hospital in Viet Nam.

Opening Remarks

• Marie Ruel, Director of Poverty, Health, and Nutrition Division, IFPRI

Part 1: Recent developments in new technologies for dietary assessment and launch of Nudging for Good Plant Village FRANI application

Validity and feasibility of using FRANI, a new AI-based phone application to assess diets and improve the quality of food choices of adolescents in Ghana and Vietnam

• Aulo Gelli, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
• Pete McCloskey (via pre-recorded video)
• Phuong Nguyen, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI (via pre-recorded video)
• Gloria Folson, Research Fellow, Department of Nutrition, the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, University of Ghana (via pre-recorded video)

Passive Dietary Monitoring - the use of wearable cameras and AI to quantify dietary intake

• Benny Lo team, Senior Lecturer, Imperial College, London

INDDEX24 and Global Diet Quality Score applications

• Winnie Bell, Senior Researcher, Tufts University, INDDEX Project
• Mourad Moursi, Senior Dietary Survey Advisor, Intake Center for Dietary Assessment

Q&A

Part 2: Roundtable discussion on policy implications

• Jennie Coates, Associate Professor, Senior Researcher, Feinstein International Center at Tufts University, USAID Innovation lab for Nutrition
• Lynnda Kiess, Senior Programme Advisor Nutrition, World Food Programme (WFP)
• Arlene Mitchell, Executive Director, Global Child Nutrition Foundation (GCNF)
• David Hughes, Huck Chair in Global Food Security, Penn State University, Director of USAID Innovation Lab on Current and Emerging Threats to Crops, Founder of Carbon4Good
• Shelly Sundberg, Senior Program Officer, Nutrition, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)

Q&A

Closing Remarks

• Marie Ruel, Director of Poverty, Health, and Nutrition Division, IFPRI