The Malabo Montpellier Panel at AKADEMIYA2063 (www.AKADEMIYA2063.org) recently concluded the 9th edition of the biannual Malabo Montpellier Forum (https://bit.ly/3rykPXW) to offer a roadmap of policy innovations for food systems transformation, building resilience and adapting to climate change. The 9^th Meeting of the Malabo Montpellier Forum set out to promote stakeholder dialogue against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and increasingly frequent and extreme climate change related weather events across the continent. Following the UN Food Systems Summit and the recently concluded COP26, the virtual Forum unveiled Recipes for success: policy innovations to transform Africa’s food systems and build resilience (https://bit.ly/3ol5tUI), a report summarizing seven of the Panel’s reports and over 50 country analyses published between 2017 and 2020, with renewed stakeholder appetite to absorb and implement the evidence-based guide for sustainable food systems transformation. With the continent poised to host COP27 next year, and amid the just ended Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (https://bit.ly/3GelXEb), now is the time to align the goals and ambitions of the continent’s food systems transformation and climate change agendas.  

“There is no greater urgency right now than to redouble efforts to implement the Malabo agenda and accelerate progress towards successful transformation of our food systems,” said Dr. Ousmane Badiane, AKADEMIYA2063 Executive Chairperson and Malabo Montpellier Panel Co-Chair. “Significant advances have been achieved over the last couple of decades, yet, there is worrying evidence that the pace of progress had reduced significantly, even prior to the pandemic: slowing economic and agricultural rates of growth, stagnating shares of public expenditure in agriculture, increasing rates of poverty and hunger after two decades of steady decline. To reverse course and return to a trajectory of faster growth and improving living conditions requires continuity of effort and consistency of action across a number of policy areas. This current report provides a practical, evidence-based guide to do just that, drawing from proven lessons on the ground from best performing African countries in terms of progress towards ending hunger and transforming food systems,” he said.

“Recipes for success: policy innovations to transform Africa’s food systems and build resilience is not just a title of the volume released during the Forum; it captures our mission and strategy at the Malabo Montpellier Panel,” said Prof. Joachim von Braun, Malabo Montpellier Panel Co-Chair from the Center for Development Research, Bonn University in Germany. “We like to learn from successes, but we do take note of problems. The seven themes addressed in the monograph – nutrition, irrigation, mechanization, trade, digitization, energy, and livestock, are cornerstones of a well-functioning food system. But we do not treat them in isolation; we connect them to systems issues.  Going forward, the true costs of food need to be identified and considered; the costs of   malfunctioning food systems to public health and the environment must come down everywhere, notably in Africa. What we need are sustainable, efficient food systems that deliver on the African Union Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals,” he said.

The convening ended with a resounding call to action from Malabo Montpellier Forum Co-Chair, H.E. Assia Bensalah Alaoui, Ambassador-at-large of His Majesty Mohamed VI King of Morocco.

“The centrality of food systems transformation and its multiple interconnections with key areas for the sustainability of mankind will offer more opportunities to our youth and populations at large, because they will stay on our continent and contribute with their talent to the transformation of Africa and the implementation of Agenda 2063,” she said.

The 9^th Malabo Montpellier Forum attracted 120 attendees from over 50 organizations, including senior government representatives (https://bit.ly/3pkl85T) from nine African countries and featuring over 22 high-level speakers (https://bit.ly/31qvoB8), seven fireside chats and one high-level policy roundtable discussion.