The network of the International Agroecological Movement of Africa (IAM Africa) has just been considerably expanded. Its charter has been signed by its 112th member, Afruibana. It is a pan-African association of producers and exporters of fruit, particularly bananas, in Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Ghana. With a total of 80,000 direct and indirect jobs and a production of just over 600,000 tonnes of bananas in 2019, Afruibana intends to benefit more from the support of European players. “Our membership of the multilateral initiative IAM Africa is in line with the collaborative logic of our association. We are convinced that the transformation of African agriculture with sustainable and competitive value chains will be achieved through the mobilisation of all stakeholders in the sector,” says Joseph Owona Kono, President of Afruibana.
Launched on the side-lines of the third edition of the “One Planet Summit”, held in Paris on January 11th, 2021, the young agro-ecological and multilateral initiative IAM Africa aims to sustainably boost African agriculture with technical and financial support from Europe.
Investing in sustainable agriculture in Africa
Agriculture is one of the main levers of development on the continent, where almost 70% of the population still lives in rural areas. Today, there are 600 million hectares of uncultivated arable land in Africa, which offers considerable growth potential. The modernisation of Africa’s agricultural sector, particularly through agro-ecology, digital technology and social business, is therefore a priority, necessary to combine economic performance and environmental preservation.
This approach is also supported by the president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Taking part in the Climate Change Adaptation Summit organised by the Netherlands on January 25th, 2021, Gilbert F. Houngbo stated that “if investment to help small farmers adapt to climate change does not increase significantly, we risk seeing hunger increase dramatically and the world become unstable”.
Boris Ngounou