Africa Has the Answers to Its Food Security Challenges. What It Needs Is the Architecture to Act on Them

Farmer Field Day held at Mariira, to demonstrate the different Climate Smart Technologies used in farming. December 22nd, 2022. Murang'a county, Kenya. Credit: 2022 CIAT/Owen KimaniBy Ismahane ElouafiKIGALI, Rwanda, Sep 3 2026 (IPS) As leaders gather in Kigali for the Africa Food Systems Forum, they face an urgent question: why do so many proven agricultural innovations still fail to reach the farmers and communities that need them most? For the first time, Africa is home to the largest number of people facing hunger. This is despite decades of agricultural innovation developed to address the continent’s food and agriculture challenges. Between 2022 and 2024, CGIAR – the world’s largest partnership dedicated to transforming food, land and water systems in a climate crisis – developed more than 470 innovations, reaching at least six million farmers across the continent. Africa’s food systems challenges are not the result of a lack of innovation. Rather, a set of overlapping, complex and increasingly severe pressures is undermining progress at a critical point in the continent’s transformation. Climate-driven weather impacts are becoming more frequent and severe. A predicted “super” El Niño in the coming months is forecast to create drier than usual conditions across parts of West and Central Africa. In East Africa, it is forecast to reduce normal rainfall in some regions and to lead to severe rainfall and flooding in others. According to the World Meteorological Organization, Africa is warming faster than the global average. Escalating conflicts across several African countries are disrupting food supply chains and increasing the risk of severe food emergencies. At the same time, geopolitical instability has driven up the cost of agricultural inputs and transport, creating further barriers to sustainable farming. All this is taking place against a backdrop of reduced funding for agricultural development and an unprecedented decline in international aid to sub-Saharan Africa. African countries are confronting this confluence of challenges as they begin implementing the new 10-year Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme Strategy and Action Plan (2026–2035), the African Union-led roadmap for transforming the continent’s agrifood systems into more resilient drivers of economic growth, food security and healthy diets. The roadmap sets the ambition. What is missing is the architecture to make that happen: the “missing middle” between proven agricultural innovation and the large-scale public investment, partnerships and delivery capacity needed to take it to scale. Bridging this missing middle requires development funders to rethink how they support agricultural innovation. Governments, international financial institutions, multilateral development banks and African development finance institutions must move beyond portfolios of disparate projects and invest instead in coherent innovation pathways. Science and evidence must be integrated from the outset, before investment decisions are made. Innovation pathways provide a route for moving tried-and-tested solutions to scale. They allow governments, funders, scientific organizations and partners to work together to identify, validate, scale and measure the impact of the most promising innovations. Bundling complementary innovations into investable packages can also help accelerate deployment and impact, opening opportunities for ambitious young Africans to build firms, provide services and create jobs within their own food systems. African governments must remain in the driver’s seat throughout this process. That is essential to ensure investments respond to national priorities and align with country agrifood systems investment plans under CAADP. CGIAR is working to build precisely these connections between country demand, science, finance and delivery. One example is the partnership between CGIAR Scaling for Impact with the African Development Bank to support the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) and its Clearinghouse. It demonstrates how large-scale development finance and scientific expertise can be brought together to meet national agricultural priorities and deliver proven, science-backed technologies at scale. The TAAT Clearinghouse connects country demand and AfDB financing with proven innovations, CGIAR expertise and the technical support needed for effective delivery. It is currently linking approximately US$1.5 billion in AfDB-backed investments in Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo with science-backed technologies and expertise. In 2026 alone, CGIAR innovations funded and scaled through the TAAT Clearinghouse are expected to reach 3.4 million farmers across the continent. The Africa Food Systems Forum must therefore be more than a place to showcase promising ideas. It should be a critical inflection point for moving from commitment to credible investment, action and delivery. African policymakers, investors, development finance institutions and researchers should use the Forum to build a more systematic science-to-finance compact—one that places proven innovation at the heart of national investment and delivery. In an era of less aid and greater instability, Africa cannot afford for proven science to remain stranded in pilot projects—or for billions in development finance to be invested without the best available evidence. Connecting the two is one of the fastest ways to turn Africa’s food systems ambitions into results at scale. Dr. Ismahane Elouafi is Executive Managing Director, CGIAR IPS UN Bureau   Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');     Excerpt: As leaders gather in Kigali for the Africa Food Systems Forum, CGIAR’s Ismahane Elouafi argues that Africa must connect proven agricultural innovation with the finance, partnerships and delivery systems needed to achieve impact at scale.