Africa Food System Forum

Theme: Innovate, Accelerate and Scale: Delivering food systems transformation in a digital and climate era

The Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity attended the Africa Food System Forum (AFSF) on 2 - 6 September 2024 in Kigali, Rwanda. The event convened investors, food systems experts, deal owners, and representatives from the host country's legacy programs to foster projects, deals, and products, while catalysing private sector investments and partnerships within the agricultural sector. This year's theme highlighted the urgent need to unleash and leverage the creative potential of the continent's youth and women to accelerate economic development.

Winfred Kinuthia, Fund Grants and Climate Impact Manager took part in a panel discussion on 2 September titled ‘Meaningful Youth Engagement and Private Sector Role’. She shared insights on how unemployment is a big challenge in the continent and how Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) have high job creation potential. She highlighted how the Fund is supporting SMEs in Sub-Saharan Africa with the objective of unlocking enterprise growth and catalysing, scale-up enabling creation of dignified and fulfilling work opportunities for young women and men. She also highlighted the importance of the market assessments held at the inception of the Fund, bringing together stakeholders including various youth groups which provided further insight to the Fund on the need for youth employment. The panel discussion was insightful and concluded with the panellists in agreement that youth engagement across the economic and social spheres is crucial for sustainable development, economic growth, and the progression of societies.

The Mastercard Foundation also held a Partner Convening on 2 September that the Fund Engagement Partner, Smita Sanghrajka, and Fund Program Director, Grace Mberia attended. The Partner Convening highlighted key successes and opportunities for cross-collaboration as well as working together to foster transformative change, especially in empowering young people and women agri-preneurs across Africa.

Smita Sanghrajka, Fund Engagement Partner moderated a panel on 10 September titled ‘Gender in Agriculture and Food Systems: African Perspective.’ The Fund Program Director, Grace Mberia, was a panellist and highlighted that the Fund has young women at the heart of the program, by supporting SMEs that can create work opportunities for young people, especially young women. She discussed some of the challenges women face is access to finance and markets which cause them to be caught in a poverty trap. She also stated that the private sector has a significant role to play in ensuring gender inclusion in Agri -food systems by ensuring proper resource flows to women leading to access to information and finance, given that women are at the centre of production and processing .She further stated on the Fund working to ensure that the flow of financing gets to the right SMEs as well as how the Fund considers Africa’s Agri – food systems as one of the sectors significantly impacted by climate change. Grace highlighted that the Fund would endeavour to integrate climate risk assessment into the portfolio. The key take-away from the panel discussion was that the private sector needs to keep women voices engaged in terms of policy making and decision making to ensure an all-rounded change.

Other Fund team members present at AFSF included the Portfolio Monitoring, Reporting & Insights Manager Judith Odongo, Senior Monitoring Evaluation and Learning Lead, Erick Sakwa and Fund Communications Associate, Kelly Ochieng. The team attended sessions throughout the which highlighted challenges facing food systems in Africa such as access to finance and climate change as well as the possible solutions. Some of the sessions attended included ‘Food Systems and nutrition in a time of crisis : youth refugees, migrants and displaced people as part of the solution,’ ‘Innovative financing to accelerate food systems transformation : best business models and philanthropic public – private partnerships,’ ‘The Gender and Climate nexus in food systems financing,’ ‘The Climate Clock,’ ‘Climate and Environmental Finance.’ From the sessions the team gained valuable insights which will continue to inform the design of the agribusiness challenge fund. 

The Fund team also held various stakeholder meetings with potential applicants, TA service providers and investors and had an exhibition booth where all team members were able to engage directly with various stakeholders such as SMEs and industry leaders amongst others, who are potentially relevant to the Fund interventions. They were also able to interact one-on-one with prospective participants of the Agribusiness Challenge Fund as well as the Climate Impact Challenge Fund, share knowledge on the Fund's overall objective of job creation for young women and men, young people living with disabilities, and refugee youth and engage in discussions with industry leaders and investors on accessing the market for the SMEs that the Fund will support, and were successful in expanding the Fund’s communication database with relevant contacts.