Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe has called on African countries to act collectively with a unity of purpose if they are to attain food independence and sovereignty.
Kagwe pointed that a collective vision for Africa's food future should therefore look at four priorities, namely, scaling up agro-processing and trade, mobilizing climate finance, empowering youth and innovation and policy coherence and partnerships.
Speaking during the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS+4) at the United Nations Complex in Nairobi, Kagwe noted that four years ago, the global community came together under the banner of the UNFSS to confront a stark reality: food systems are deeply intertwined with the most pressing challenges of our time climate change, poverty, malnutrition, and inequality.
For Africa, he said that this reality is not just a matter of policy but of survival, adding that despite the continent's vast agricultural potential, it remains absurdly dependent on food imports, spending billions of scarce foreign exchange resources annually, while smallholder farmers, who produce the majority of what is eaten, struggle with fragmented markets, climate extremes, and systemic inefficiencies across agricultural and livestock value chains. "The choices we make today will determine whether Africa rises as a global breadbasket or remains trapped in cycles of dependency and scarcity", the CS told stakeholders and experts from Africa who are gathered to take stock, looking at countries level of progress being made in pursuit of food systems transformation.
