A pan-African organisation, TrustAfrica, and Agroecology Fund have announced a new partnership to provide solutions to hunger and climate in West and Eastern Africa.
The two international organisations are to launch regional agroecology funds in West and Eastern Africa.
The partnership was announced in a statement on Friday by the Executive Director, TrustAfrica, Dr. Ebrima Sall, and African Regional Funds Coordinator for Agroecology Fund, Tabara Ndiaye.
Sall stated that the funds would be co-managed by TrustAfrica and the Agroecology Fund.
According to him, the funds will offer donors a simple way to fund grassroots organizations, networks and emerging enterprises that are critical to scaling agroecology up and out across Africa.
He said: “This partnership will further ensure that organizations representing indigenous peoples, women, and youth receive the support they need to advance agroecology and uphold their rights.
“Trust Africa has a strong record of seeding and nurturing new, leading organizations, voices and networks and anchoring collaborative processes and movement building to find solutions to critical questions that can advance a progressive continental development agenda.
“Agroecology is one such critical solution.”
Sall further noted that regional funds give bilateral and multilateral agencies, as well as private philanthropists, an opportunity to support hard-to-reach grassroots work and to jointly fund inclusive and rights-based initiatives rooted in agroecology principles that support impacts as diverse as food security, food sovereignty, biodiversity conservation, and climate resilience.
This approach, according to him, will transform global food systems.
Ndiaye said the pact would provide support for grantee organisations in monitoring their progress against sought outcomes.
He remarked that the pact would further contribute to regional learning, knowledge generation and exchanges, deepen grassroots evidence for agroecology, and adjust and improve strategies for scaling up agroecology.
Ndiaye said: “The Funds have been capitalized by philanthropic organizations both large and small, from the Ikea Foundation to the 11th Hour Project.
“With agroecology increasingly embraced as a critical solution to multiple challenges that Africa is facing, the funds are expected to grow quickly.
“Territorial-based approaches to funding is a key Agroecology Fund strategy, and the Africa Funds are the third and fourth regional funds to be launched in the last four years. The first was in Mexico in 2020 and the second in India in 2022.”
Agroecology, recognised in most parts of the world as a climate and hunger solution, is gaining traction in Africa and worldwide.
A quickly growing grassroots agroecology movement in Africa is shifting policies, practices, and investments toward climate-friendly food systems.
The African agroecology movement is a dynamic ecosystem, composed of thousands of associations, cooperatives, networks, policy makers and academics working to decolonize Africa’s food systems and regenerate Africa’s soils weakened by overuse of chemical inputs and failed Green Revolution policies.
