Muraho! I’m writing this edition from Kigali, where the Africa Food Systems Forum — the biggest annual gathering of government leaders, financiers, development organizations, researchers, farmers, and agripreneurs on the continent — came to a close Friday evening.

This year’s five-day event drew more than 5,700 people from 118 countries at the Kigali Convention Centre — a futuristic, towering dome that glitters at night with the green, blue, and yellow of the Rwandan flag. A few times daily it would echo with the playing of traditional cowhide-and-wood drums known as ingoma as Rwandan dancers leaped, sang, and swayed to the beat. As for attendees’ outfits? A burst of traditional prints, fabrics, and bright colors.

The theme was “Investing in Africa's Agri-Food Systems: Growing Jobs, Nourishing Nations, Building Resilience.” Among the ideas that stood out to me was building self-reliance amid climate and geopolitical shocks by strengthening local markers and intraregional trade. The continent spends some $70 billion per year importing food. Another challenge is shifting to diets that are nutritious, not just empty calories, on a continent where 309 million people are food insecure.

Of paramount importance is job creation. Africa’s youth population is expected to double to over 830 million by 2050. This point was ubiquitous throughout the forum, as youth appeared on panels alongside finance executives and heads of state to discuss the future of agribusiness. In one session, young agripreneurs appeared on the main stage with former Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

“Young people are not waiting to inherit Africa’s food systems — they are already reengineering them,” said Desalegn, who chairs the board of directors for AGRA, the Nairobi-based, African-led organization that leads the forum’s steering committee. “They are building drone-enabled crop analytics, financing smallholder networks with mobile collateral, developing cold-chain logistics powered by renewable energy, and proving that agriculture is Africa’s most available frontier for job creation.”

Read the full article about the Africa Food Systems Forum by Tania Karas at Devex.