Leadership for Agricultural Transformation: Town Hall with the President
DATE: Tuesday 23 May 2017
TIME: 11:30 – 13:00
PRESIDENTIAL PANEL
- Dr. Akinwumi A. Adesina, President, AfDB
- H.E. Macky Sall, President of Senegal
- H.E. Daniel Kablan Duncan, Vice-President of Côte d’Ivoire
- Ambassador Kenneth M. Quinn, President, The World Food Prize Foundation
MODERATOR
- Ms. Bronwyn Nielsen, Senior Anchor of CNBC Africa
In the current policy and research environment, there is significant momentum behind developing and promoting the agricultural sector as a catalyst to industrialization. Developing industrial agri-businesses would raise productivity in the sector and ultimately support economic growth and structural transformation by enabling the labor force to move from the agriculture sector into manufacturing and services. Moreover, developing an agro-allied industrialization in Africa requires to advance an inclusive growth agenda given that half of the labor force in the continent works in the agriculture sector in rural areas, of which 80 percent are smallholder farmers and a significant share are female workers. There remains significant research and policy gaps regarding the pathways that would lead to such transformations with the view to alleviate high poverty rates in rural spaces, smooth transitory income, and enable food insecure households to meet their food and nutritional needs as well as link smallholder farmers to larger agro-business firms. For instance, adequate policies are needed to overcome multiple market failures and imperfections and to improve an inclusive access to modern inputs, labor, land, finance, and other agricultural factors of production and markets in order to enable a dual structural transformation of agriculture.
The President of the AfDB will be joined by Heads of States from the regional member countries to reflect on policy options to accelerate agriculture transformation in Africa. During this event, African Leaders will highlight the state of African agriculture, the existing investment opportunities and policy tools to unlock the potential of the sector. This first plenary session will therefore provide a platform for high-level political discussions whereby leaders will share their visions and perspectives on opportunities and challenges of agricultural transformation, as well as possible new initiatives. This will be a live televised event.
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