On May 27th, elected representatives, especially youth representatives, from the WFO farmers’ organisations NASFAM (Malawi), INGABO (Rwanda), ZFU (Zimbabwe), COFAG (Ghana), AKKOR (Russia) and DBV (Germany) convened digitally to join the first pre-seminar of the project “Transitional Agriculture“.
This first webinar signed the kick-off of a 3-year exchange program to work closely with African Farmers’ Organisations on challenges and solutions of family farming in fast-changing, transitional contexts.
It explored how the marketing of agricultural products have changed over the past five years, focusing on the most critical innovations, their origin, and most of all the role of farmers’ organisations played in terms of initiatives implemented to support their farmers’ members in overcoming challenges. COVID 19 and how it disrupted the food value chain was also central in the debate. FOs were asked to point out how the pandemic outbreak impacted the marketing of agricultural products in their Countries and which were the needs expressed by their farmers’ members. A strong focus was made on how them, as Farmers’ Organisations, decided to respond to the call from their members to tackle the COVID 19 challenge.
By the end, all the participants shared their views and opinions in an inspiring and constructive exchange.
The project, supported by the Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) through the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ), is implemented through Andreas Hermes Akademie (AHA) and AgrarKontakte International (AKI).