 join us. I think we're ready to start. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for joining us here this afternoon on day one of the World Economic Forum on Africa 2016. Now there are no industry more important in Africa than agriculture. We know that 40% of food currently produced does not make it from farm to fork. There's a huge wastage issue that leaders have been grappling with for some time. We know that there is a no bigger employer. It's 400 million or 65% of Africans rely on agriculture for their income. We know that for Africa to progress and move at the value chain it needs to develop better facilities and storage is one of them. So I'm very delighted right at the end of the the closing of our Grow Africa investment forum which happened across town this morning over the past couple of days to be able to be joined by some of the leaders here who are going to announce a very ambitious scheme to open up and produce one million tons of cold storage. Now to tell that story and to give a bit of a bit of an insight into the processes and what exactly it means and what's going to be done what kind of action we're going to see I'm very delighted to be joined by my first panelist Agnes Matilda Calibata president the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa and of course delighted to say a member of our global agenda council on food and nutrition. My second guest is Gerardine Mukeshimana minister of agriculture and animal resources here in Rwanda and of course Jay Shroff chief executive officer of UPL in India who's been instrumental in getting this program off the ground. Agnes if I could start with you to give us some insight into what this scheme means. It's a very ambitious target you've set yourself. Thank you. Thank you. So the institution that I lead the Alliance for Green Inversion in Africa Agra focuses on working smallholder farmers and increasing and helping them increase productivity by ensuring that we really focus on the things that are holding smallholder farmers back. Now one of the areas that have been identified as very critical to supporting farmers but is also a low-hanging fruit on the continent is the area of potatoes. Today between three countries in East Africa Kenya Uganda and Rwanda 1.7 million farmers are producing 6 million tons of potatoes but this could actually be 120 million tons of potatoes so these farmers are held back by a number of factors called storage being one of them. Access to the right input systems being another disease management being another right seeds and you know credit our presidents in the morning we are talking about all the challenges that are holding back the agricultural sector we had that and these are the very challenges that are holding back the potato industry except the potato industry also suffers from being highly perishable the potatoes are quite perishable and because of that code storage becomes a significant need today we have a growing industry in potatoes that is mostly fed from imports in nearly every chip you eat in a decent hotel in Africa is imported just think about it every time you're eating a potato chip that potato chip has been imported yet we are consuming lots of potatoes because you know the reason they have to be imported today because there's an industrial process that happens that gets potatoes to those chips through a pre-cooking process I would call it so hotels actually import them when they are nearly done so the reason this there hasn't been major investment opportunities in that is because of lack of cold chain potatoes don't stay long enough we produce potatoes on the season and they don't stay long enough for an industry to be supported so today we are very proud to be going into partnership with a number of institutions that have seen the need governments definitely the government of one has been a champion in this business really ensuring that potatoes that farmers that are producing potatoes see a rise and the minister will talk about that there's been a major increase in potato production in the last few years but also there could be much more the government of Uganda also is engaged in this and the government of Kenya is engaged in this so this is going to be a partnership between governments between investors and UPL as they will be saying they will be telling us later today are looking to be investing and we'll talk about it but we also have other investors that are looking to bring in finance we also have other investors that are looking to bring in input systems all the things that I talked about that are weaknesses in the in the environment in the landscape of potato growing and potato processing so that we get a potato on the table that is not only grown in Africa but is also processed in Africa so that's the the that's what we are going to be discussing today and the minister I hand back over to you thank you I'm going to hand right back over to the minister it's a fascinating story and as you say you're stuck with a low hanging fruit I'd love to hear more about the Rwandan story what efforts you've been made so far to move at the value chain and what this project means to you doing your job Rwanda is trying to address the production issues through a value chain approach all the way from research production and post harvest handling and management so we have been investing a lot of money into production factors but also into post harvest management because we know that in this country there are two main factors that we need to focus on the increasing the productivity but also reducing post harvest losses so the government of Rwanda has been dealing in reducing post harvest losses in the different ways by providing warehouses making a rural road and so on but this area of commodities that are consumed or sold as a fresh commodities we have not been doing as well as we wish where the in the area of potatoes there are some processing industries coming in chip making frozen fries coming in so the issue is that how these processing plants are going to have sustainable supply of raw material so this project is going to be tackling that but on top of that it's critical that small holder producers are getting access to markets so it's important that this project is going to be to be bridging the gap in the middle between the production and the market access thank you thanks Jay Shroff you're the chief executive officer of UPL based in India this is a this is not CSR is it this is a business venture for you tell us about a bit about why you're getting involved so UPL and UPL foundation are very excited to be part of this project we have been working on it for more than three years with Minister Kali Bhatta and we are very pleased that it's seeing the light of the day there's a lot of discussion gone on on this project with many different stakeholders but UPL you know we are involved in bringing technologies to farmers to improve farm productivity and the the biggest challenge we find that in Africa is that improving farm productivity does not necessarily mean improving improvement in prosperity and soon we realize that connecting the small holder farmers to value chain is is really critical missing link in Africa to improve small farmer or farmer prosperity they need to have and to get them to have sustainable income the key challenge is to really connect them to value chains and when we look more carefully at how do we connect to value chains and how do we get farmers to really grow higher value crops we realize that there is almost no existence of coal chains in in this part of Africa and many parts of Africa and so to really make agriculture more sustainable to increase the farm economy to improve the really revenues this is we believe the huge biggest impact impactful investment is is investing in coal chain and this discussion has led to this project where we will have a million tons of coal chain primarily focused initially on potatoes but obviously available for other perishable farmers farming produce and we believe there's enough market in Africa itself but if Africa is to export high quality foods you know we need to have a coal chain where the farmer can can can use to to to really you know deliver high quality goods not only in within Africa but also exported so long term this sort of investment will really impact the whole economy as we've all known and I think with with the whole commodity price you know difficulties the world is facing I think most governments have realized most presidents have realized that making sure that agriculture is profitable and sustainable small farmer agriculture even large farmer agriculture is sustainable is critical to the economies of Africa and if the world if we need to really have sustainable food supplies Africa is going to be a key key player in the future and this sort of investment which we are initiating is is going to be critical for this thanks I'm happy to take questions from the floor again to start with one of my own this is a ambitious scheme is said two billion dollars of investments going to be mobilized though commendable start but what are we going to see first one of the mechanics how can we start seeing this this plan put into practice and what kind of timeline are we looking at maybe I'll take a shot go at it what we are going to see first is the convening the getting together so part of what we've been working on this is that this is a discussion that has been happening for probably over three years now yes through the graphical forum so one of the things that graphical does well is to bring people together and through Africa we did meet Jay and his company up here and we've been we started a discussion where the wonder government expressed interest and now three other two other countries have expressed interest we've also gotten a whole list of people that are interested other investors that are looking at the opportunities that are getting created around this value chain like I said earlier they were looking to sell inputs to farmers once a farmer has a market and and sees the real real value in that market those start buying real good seeds good quality seeds and they'll start buying fertilizer so that they can increase their produce so that they can move from five tons to 25 tons that's where we want to be so the role of Agra in this is to help in that system of first of all convening getting people together to have a discussion around who is investing in what number one number two to support we're needed in investing on the part of farmers to ensure that the devil of aggregation in terms of getting the yields and the the produce that we want to see going to these warehouses is actually happening so it's really our role is going to be mostly bringing people together number one and supporting bring putting resources on the table to support farmers to do the aggregation part enjoy when are we gonna see the first facilities coming online so I mean we are in active dialogue with the three governments ministers here we were just talking about the nitty gritties about energy costs and how we're gonna make it affordable I think that you know from from our side we are very eager to move ahead and we have committed that the first few ones we we are willing to commit or whatever resources necessary to get the pilots off the ground we believe that end of 2017 is is feasible we we are hoping that we get all the permits and whatever necessary paperwork we can move quickly sometimes these things take some time but we have two very important people from from from these countries here and I think we should be able to get them off the ground in in middle to late 2017 fantastic and Agnes you hinted at the question about to ask which is it's this is a low-hanging fruit what's what's been holding us back is an obvious missing link in in moving out the valley chain is having cold storage facilities yeah I guess the most critical part is the fact that potatoes are perishable crop it can't be stored for very long the markets become erratic because of that they get concentrated around the production time and because of that farmers lose so much a farmer could be making a thousand dollars a ton today when a farmer makes 200 dollars a ton so it that's where I say it's a low-hanging fruit it's also a low-hanging fruit because the market is increasing as as most of these countries start becoming moving towards middle-income countries as they start moving towards I mean Rwanda and Kenya for example and even Uganda have been growing very fast part of this growth is influencing eating habits and one of the things that is getting consumed more and more is potatoes so it's a really lucrative business except farmers are not gaining from it except it's not structured enough to allow industrialization to start happening so that's why I say it's a low-hanging fruit for it has huge potential for farmers but also it has huge potential for economic why the economic benefits Madam Minister finally how does this how does how does this scheme tie in with other efforts to move out the valley chain and what are your expectations what what what what structure what form will agriculture in Rwanda have in the years ahead what are you building to what's your vision actually in Rwanda this area for potato production is pretty advanced as we speak the farmers are really interested in increasing their productivity and I think we are the highest country that is having a good productivity in potatoes and we have been setting up aggregation aggregation points so that the people coming to buy the potatoes they are we're knowing where to get it from and we are in the process of establishing a horse or market for the potatoes but as I mentioned before being a highly perishable product it's important that we think of for ways of storing it I know this project has been discussed for almost three years and what has been holding us back was the cost of energy so as this country has a huge ambition of getting electricity to at least 70 percent of our population by 2018 so with that pace of for increasing electricity access and looking at how much investment that government is putting at generating electricity but also at transporting it into different areas we see it as an opportunity to start thinking of all these kinds of investments I know your name but my colleagues here might not so please let us know who you are and why you're from okay thank you my name is Collins why I'm a writer with the New Times Daily my anism to madam and anybody else on the panel one of the one of the biggest reasons why Africa has not been able to feed itself is because a large number of farmers across the continent or in the sub-Saharan African small-holder farmers they have traditional practices in most of their produce is for sub is is for subsistence use so now that you have a storage cooling for the facility how are you going to make sure that or what mechanisms are in place to to change their productive to improve the volumes of all production to to not only export but actually fit the the the continent thank you and which are the three card and which are the two countries are on board thank you is it is it build it and they come how can you guarantee that people are going to to use these facilities and how can we turn that into export rather than import I think the minister mentioned it red dishes the minister said they're working on aggregation centers already and that's a real step forward in many ways making sure that farmers are coming together and in addition to aggregation systems is also working on productivity to ensure that farmers are getting higher returns per unit I mean potato farming is one of the areas where you actually the possibility to increase increase the unit per hectare of a small-holder farmer is that is one of the largest so there's a real value around that so the I think the benefit that farmers will see in cold storage that they will want to be part of it is because there's a real value to increase now they can move from the subsistence that you're talking about of five tons which farmers you know do when they don't have any reason to do more to 30 tons to the 30 tons and I mean picture a farmer earning 30 tons versus the 5 tons it's it's huge difference and the cold storage will allow this farmer to store these potatoes and be able to sell whenever the market is is is functioning to his benefit so this is a real protein turn I think that's going to be the largest incentive but also I mean to me what I had said earlier is also the impact it's having on the economy the fact that now other processes that we are not happening on industrializing and adding value to potatoes are going to happen because potatoes will be available throughout the year through cold storage so there's a huge incentive for farmers to be part of that and I'm sure it's not a very hard sell and college you're asking which countries were involved in this scheme yes the countries involved in this scheme is Rwanda Uganda and Kenya the three actually the three largest producers of potatoes in the region I can go so one of the the key challenges in this project or to make it successful is really to create you know industry around the crop so we want potato processing industry setup we are going to invite other players local and international players to set up potato processing companies we are talking to you know multilateral organization we are talking to NGOs is that how can you help make this sustainable by making sure you procure higher value added crops from that we have realized in many parts of the world particularly India where we are from is that when an industry is set up they are willing to pay a little higher price for sustainable good quality of product so they can onward sell more sustain good quality product and and this really creates that the the whole chain where if I'm developing a brand of high quality product I need high quality raw material so we are looking for partners who will set up processing industry around these cold chain units to buy potatoes around the year either the farmer can own the potatoes or the the processing industry can buy it in the beginning of the season and store it so it'll be a mixed model and and we think that this will give the farmers an option to sell potatoes three months later four months later when the prices are much higher when all of them are harvesting it together so it's a very exciting thing and we think it'll take some time for everybody to digest it but once it kicks off we're going to see a huge revolution of you know people folk farmers for focusing on increasing yield and using whatever tools they can to increase productivity thank you Joe one last question for me taking advantage of my position here to ask what I want Agnes you mentioned this is a low hanging fruit obviously is it the one missing link between getting Africa to have a food processing industry of notes and to become a real exporter are there any other pain points we should also be looking at are you all looking at that we might be hearing about in the future oh there are a number of them during the this graphic committing a number of other committees were discussed including but not limited to including rice there was a rice value chain going on really looking to to to ensure that Africa become self-sufficient in rice given that we have huge area that we are not using huge trucks of land there was also there's also a value chain happening around Kosovo and so so when I say value chain happening in rural Africa it means that the critical partners have been catalyzed enough and see the opportunities enough to want to come together so that they start investing to ensure that the $40 billion in food import bill that Africa is actually experiencing that is going to grow to 110 billion dollars in by 2025 in less than another 10 years is is going to be also catalyzing African markets that's a huge opportunity and people are beginning to look at how do we start working to catalyze these Africans to take advantage of their own market another value chain that we are looking at with UPL actually is pulses how do we start working on ensuring that farmers who are producing pulses whether it's beans whether it's all sorts of pulses that we have in the region cow peas pigeon peas are taking advantage of the markets that are being created around in India and other continents that are looking for those opportunities so it's it's a beginning of of huge interests around creating markets for farmers because we've noticed that it markets are becoming more a limiting factor the input system is a beginning to work but markets are becoming a limiting factor and I think it's the case for wonder just like it is the case for many other countries and the convening paragraph for investment forum a plug for you Lauren seems to be working there are lots of conversations let's finally I can't help myself one last question Jay it's just widened out you mentioned about food import exports and that you're interested in other areas or other food chains how where does Africa features part of your your global plan you know UPI is a global company and we are present in almost 120 countries Africa is is an exciting place to be for us it's not a key market but it is somewhere where we think that the technologies which we can bring to the table particularly with our heritage being Indian and we have we are dealing with millions of small farmers on a daily basis in India average farm size in India may be same or smaller than in Africa we believe that all our experience and knowledge and technologies which we have developed to deal with small farmers can really create an impactful huge impact in Africa and it's something which comes naturally to us so we believe that over the next 10-15 years UPL and it's our experience our ability to work with small hold of farmers we can we can make a huge impact and that's why we are excited about being in Africa fascinating well it's been an absolute pleasure to see how our cousins of the graphic investment form of being working on for the past two days really exciting to see great progress being made I'd like to thank you for joining us here today I'd like to thank you for joining us here in the room and for watching is live on weforum.org this session is now over thank you