With food insecurity and geopolitical tensions growing and climate change accelerating, Alvaro Lario, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) highlighted IFAD’s role today in supporting deeper AU-EU collaboration to make Africa’s food systems more sustainable, resilient and fairer for the food producers. Lario was speaking at the 6th African Union (AU) – European Union (EU) Agriculture Ministerial Conference which brought agriculture Ministers from Africa and Europe together in Rome today to discuss actional ways to strengthen both continents’ agri-food systems and explore synergies between them.
“The food systems of Europe and Africa are deeply interlinked. Our futures are connected—economically, environmentally, and socially,” said Lario. “IFAD is ready to act as a bridge—to connect resources, institutions, and ideas from both sides of the Mediterranean. Together, the AU, EU, and IFAD can lead the transformation of African agriculture so it becomes a vehicle for sustainable and inclusive growth.”
While Africa faces challenges feeding its growing population with one African in five suffering from hunger, the agri-food sector also has a huge potential for growth. Under the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, African agriculture is projected to generate US$1 trillion in agribusiness by 2030. In this context, Africa’s 33-50 million smallholder farms, which provide livelihoods to hundreds of millions of people, play a pivotal role in the continent’s economy and food systems. With greater investment, Africa has huge potential to grow more and more diverse food, increase small agribusinesses, provide jobs for youth, and contribute to healthy diets and rural and national economies.
The 6th AU- EU Agriculture Ministerial conference takes place while there are growing concerns over domestic food security in both Europe and Africa. To this end, the African Union recently launched its Kampala Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) and Action Plan 2026-2035 to foster greater food security, enhance agricultural productivity and address rural poverty. Recently the European Commission has listed food security as one of Europe’s top seven strategic priorities and adopted the EU’s new Vision for Agriculture and Food.
The EU has been one of IFAD’s long term strategic partners, with an interest in building food value chains, aligned with the EU’s Global Gateway strategy, which emphasizes trade corridors, rural infrastructure, and inclusive investments.
As a sign of this continued partnership, during the conference IFAD and the EU signed an agreement to invest EUR 26 million to support Farmers Organizations (FOs) in Africa in their work in improving market links between rural people and value chains in regional agricultural markets, as part of the FO4IMPACT programme which will support FOs in Africa, Asia and the Pacific.
This new programme builds on the Farmers’ Organizations for Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (FO4ACP) programme which has successfully built the capacities of farmers’ organizations and provided their members with access to finance, agricultural inputs and a voice in policymaking processes between 2019 and 2025. It is one of the five farmers’ organization projects covered by global FO4 programmes in which the EU, IFAD, and the Organization of African, Caribbean and Pacific States have invested EUR 73.5 million reaching 12 per cent of the world’s family farmers. The FO4 programs have tripled the volume of products marketed and quadrupled sales, as well as increased FO membership by 51 per cent, including a sixfold increase in women and youth in leadership positions.
