CHAMPIONING THE TRANSITION TO AGROECOLOGY

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Promoting agroecology with the intention of building food sovereignty is a complex process, one that require complex strategies. The bright side is that many of these strategies are being developed by food producers and allies through farmer led innovation and learning networks, alliance building, and advocating for new mechanisms, policies, and institutions in local, national, and international domains.

In light of the above, Alliance for food sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) held the first ever African Agroecological Entrepreneurship & Territorial Markets Convening in Kampala majorly aiming at creating a community of support to increase demand for an enabling business environment for African agroecological entrepreneurs and territorial markets, increasing recognition of African agroecological entrepreneurs and territorial markets by agroecology movements, donors, investors, service providers, and governments, as well as building momentum for formulating policy recommendations and initiating new programs that will enable the smooth transition to Agroecology.


Part of the challenges for the amplification of agroecology has been in the translation of agroecological principles into practical strategies, the convening was timely to provide those practical strategies through strengthening awareness and inclusion, as well as holding conversations with bi-lateral agencies on prioritising enabling policy implementation

At the conference, emphasis was in part about reviving the traditional agricultural systems that offer promising models of sustainability and resilience, and the creation of “agroecological lighthouses” from which principles are cast out to local communities to help them build the basis for agricultural strategies that promote diversity, synergy, and resiliency. Achieving this though would require policies and solidarity market arrangements to provide economic viability to the amplification of agroecology.

Seven years ago, a major consensus building process came to fruition with international agreement on a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets to guide an integrated plan of action applicable to all developed and developing countries (UN 2015). With respect to SDG2, sustainability in agriculture was identified as fundamental to addressing the grand challenge of achieving food security. Transition to sustainable food and agricultural systems thus requires a long-term perspective and holistic approaches of the kind embodied in agroecological approaches that are increasingly recognised as having potential to ease the transformative change in agriculture required to meet the SDGs.

AFSA is fronting Agroecology as a solution to modern crises such as climate change and malnutrition, in contrast with the dominant industrial agriculture model based on the use of external inputs. The goal is to transform agriculture to build locally relevant food systems that strengthen the economic viability of small-scale farmers based on small marketing chains, as well as fair and safe food production. This involves supporting diverse forms of smallholder food production and family farming, farmers and rural communities, food sovereignty, local knowledge, identity and culture, and indigenous rights for seeds.

The strong involvement of policy and decision-makers at all levels, as well as farmer organisations, supply chain actors among others, was to facilitate an agroecological transition through building synergies between context-specific local knowledge and recognizing social and institutional innovation as critical to catalysing and supporting the transition.

Ultimately, among others, the result sought was to mobilise stakeholders to work together to scale up this transition process by showcasing what has already been achieved and what each stakeholder needs to contribute to achieve the long-desired food sovereignty goal. 

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