Representatives from across food production, food safety, governance, and research and development funding sectors came together in Addis Ababa at the African Union Conference Center to discuss implementation of the new EU-Africa roadmap for food security.  The focus was on co-development of activities, bringing farming and processing practitioners together with academics, technologists, and bi-regional funding and management directors from both private and public concerns.

Discussions with this diversity of stakeholders at these early stages identified areas of joint action that will ultimately make the road-map implementation more successful and the results more easily translatable and scale-able from the individual farmer to large agricultural consortia.

The Belmont Forum was pleased to be invited to partake in the stakeholder dialogue.  Many of the recommendations for action reflected the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach that the Forum supports through its Collaborative Research Actions.  There was also groundswell for more flexible Belmont-type funding mechanisms that allow multi-lateral and multi-national cooperation between agencies, ministries, NGO’s, and businesses with similar goals.

The Forum thanks the organizers for this inclusive discussion and the opportunity to share experiences funding Food Security and Land Use Change research in Africa and around the world.  Results from the Belmont Forum funded projects on food security will be presented at the Global Land Project Open Science Meeting on land system science: understanding realities and developing solutions in Beijing in October 2016.

Note: This post originally appeared on appeared on Belmont Forum Secretariat Executive Director Erica Key’s Linkedin blog.