Africa Has the Answers to Its Food Security Challenges. What It Needs Is the Architecture to Act on Them

Farmer Field Day held at Mariira, to demonstrate the different Climate Smart Technologies used in farming. December 22nd, 2022. Murang'a county, Kenya. Credit: 2022 CIAT/Owen KimaniOpinion by Ismahane Elouafi (kigali, rwanda)Thursday, September 03, 2026Inter Press Service KIGALI, Rwanda, September 3 (IPS) - As leaders gather in Kigali for the Africa Food Systems Forum, they face an urgent question: why do so many proven agricultural innovations still fail to reach the farmers and communities that need them most? For the first time, Africa is home to the largest number of people facing hunger. This is despite decades of agricultural innovation developed to address the continent’s food and agriculture challenges. Between 2022 and 2024, CGIAR – the world’s largest partnership dedicated to transforming food, land and water systems in a climate crisis – developed more than 470 innovations, reaching at least six million farmers across the continent.Africa’s food systems challenges are not the result of a lack of innovation. Rather, a set of overlapping, complex and increasingly severe pressures is undermining progress at a critical point in the continent’s transformation.Climate-driven w...