Food Systems

Militaries play a major role in the politics of many countries. They determine whether elections can occur and who can compete. From Egypt to Pakistan and Myanmar to Uganda, the military is often the most important powerholder.In parallel, violent non-state actors—including criminal networks, terrorist groups and paramilitaries—have proliferated over the last two decades.To maintain their influence and finance their operations, militaries and violent non-state actors often become heavily involved in both legal and illicit business activities.

Formally including Ugandan women in commercial agriculture—through contract ownership or behavior-change interventions—can increase women’s empowerment without reducing productivity, and with positive spillovers for household welfare and gender relations.Estimates suggest that there are 475 million smallholder farms in low- and middle-income countries, including 43 million in sub-Saharan Africa (Lowder et al. 2016, FAO 2017).

The cost of a tomato in Kenya cannot just be measured by the shillings reflected in the direct cost-based market price—it also reflects the costs associated with the land that gets eroded, the carbon emitted, the water and air that get polluted, the children that miss school, underpaid women’s labor, the harassment they endure in the fields, and the credit they are denied.

Rwanda’s agrifood system is identified as an interconnected ecosystem of actors and activities extend across various food system’s stages, from production, processing, distribution, consumption, to waste management. It is central to the country’s structural transformation driving food and nutrition security, livelihood improvement, and sustainable economic growth. Current data indicate that the AFS makes up nearly two-fifths of GDP and accounted for more than 60% of total employment in 2022 (Xinshen Diao et al, 2025).

Extreme poverty and fragility are increasingly converging, and so must the policies and financing designed to address them. This was the central message of an October 17 policy seminar, Tackling Extreme Poverty and Financing for Food Systems in Africa, organized by IFPRI on the margins of the 2025 World Bank-International Monetary Fund (IMF) Annual Meetings in Washington, D.C.