Bya Abebe Haile-Gabrie
A technological revolution is reshaping global agriculture. Artificial intelligence can detect crop diseases and anticipate weather risks. Drones, sensors and geospatial tools can improve farm management, while digital platforms connect producers to advice, finance and markets. For Africa, these advances could raise productivity, strengthen resilience, reduce food losses and create new opportunities for young people.
The decisive question is whether Africa can harness these technologies, develop and adapt innovations to its own needs, and bring them to scale to transform its agrifood systems.
The continent has no shortage of ideas, scientific expertise or entrepreneurial talent. The challenge is to turn these assets into practical solutions that reach millions of producers, generate sustainable returns and strengthen Africa’s capacity to feed itself.
Move beyond the pilot-project trap
Across Africa, researchers, universities and technology enterprises are developing locally relevant solutions for crop health, soil management, logistics and post-harvest losses. FAO’s Digital Villages Initiative and Hand-in-Hand Initiative show how digital tools, data and geospatial analysis can guide agricultural development and investment. Yet promising innovations too often succeed in one district through a time-bound project and then fade when funding ends.
Pilot projects are essential for testing new approaches, but without a pathway to wider adoption and sustainable financing, even successful innovations may never deliver their full potential.
Scaling requires more than replicating a demonstration. It demands stronger research and extension systems, accessible finance, skilled technicians, effective producer organizations, viable business models and policies that encourage responsible private investment. The objective must be to build systems that continue delivering after individual projects and funding cycles end.
Declarations must lead to delivery
Africa is not short of strategies or political declarations. From the Maputo Declaration in 2003 and the Malabo Declaration in 2014 to the Kampala Declaration in 2025, African leaders have set ambitious goals for agrifood systems transformation. But the test of commitment is the decisions, budgets, institutions and implementation that follow. Little will change until Africa chooses a course to move from commitments to investment and from investment to measurable results.
Governments must treat agricultural research, innovation and digital infrastructure as strategic investments. Development partners should support nationally owned systems rather than fragmented short-term interventions. Financial institutions need instruments suited to the risks of agricultural innovation, while private enterprises must be able to build viable businesses around solutions that deliver genuine value to producers.
Innovation must also start with the problem, not the technology. For some producers, the most transformative solutions may be improved seeds, healthier soils, affordable irrigation, animal-health services, appropriate mechanization, reliable extension, storage or processing. For others, digital advisory services and artificial intelligence may offer significant benefits. Smallholder farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk, women and young people must help design and deploy these solutions; not merely receive them.
Judge innovation by the results it delivers
These challenges are at the heart of the Africa Forum on Harnessing Science and Innovation for Agrifood Systems Transformation, in Addis Ababa from 27–29 October 2026. It envisions placing science and innovation at the centre of agrifood policies and investment plans; stronger national research, education, extension and innovation systems; greater and more predictable financing across the innovation continuum; enabling regulatory and data-governance frameworks; and meaningful participation by producers, women, young people and local communities. It also aims to forge regional cooperation to be used to move knowledge, technologies, services and investment across borders and create larger markets for African solutions.
The Forum aims to develop a roadmap to translate commitments into concrete actions. Under consideration are regional innovation hubs; expanded access to scientific knowledge and proven solutions; more financing to take innovations from proof of concept to market and scale; tracking investment and progress through CAADP; and an annual Youth Agrifood Innovation Challenge.
These proposals matter because they connect ambition with responsibility. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the African Union Commission (AUC), the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM), and the global agricultural research partnership CGIAR, have worked together to organize this Forum and will play an important role in ensuring the Forum’s commitments do not end when participants leave Addis Ababa. The standard must remain measurable impact. Africa’s agrifood transformation should be defined by lives changed on farms, in communities and across markets. The continent must move beyond declarations and demonstrations to implementation, accountability and delivery at scale.
ENDS
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