 All right, good, good afternoon everybody. My name is Yemi Babintin-Ashay. I'm a director at the World Economic Forum. Thank you so much for joining us today for what promises to be an exciting, unexciting announcement for the continent of Africa. With me, if you allow me to please introduce our panelists today. We have Mamadou Bite, who is the head of Rockefeller Foundation for Africa. We have James Mwangi, who is the head of Dahlberg for Africa as well. Global. Global, forgive me, forgive me. I'm so sorry. We have Mr. James Mwangi, who's the CEO of Dahlberg globally. Thank you very much. And then we also have Mr. T. Schieda, who is the director of projects for the export trading group based in Maputo Mozambique. Yes. All right, thank you so much. All right, without further ado, I know we need to get straight to business. I also want to welcome our live audience online. We have typically a few hundreds of people watching. We have a special announcement. I'd like to invite Mr. Mamadou Bite to please share with us. Okay. Thank you very much, Yemi. Ladies and gentlemen of the press, dear viewers, thank you very much for joining us today for this exciting announcement. The Rockefeller Foundation, Dahlberg Global Development Advisers, represented here at my left by James Mwangi and IITA, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, announcing a joint cassava innovation challenge. The challenge will provide up to one million dollar in grants to global innovations that enhance the shelf life of cassava in Nigeria and around the globe. Earlier this year, and during the Global Forum, the Global Forum for Innovation in Agriculture in Abu Dhabi, we announced the cassava innovation challenge and our pledge to launch it this month. Well, here we are proud to be here today as a culmination of all that preparation. Why cassava? Earlier this year, we announced the yield-wise initiative at Davos. Our $130 million initiative that aims to reduce food loss by 50% by 2030. Nigeria is one of the focus countries for the initiative and cassava, one of our focus crops under the roots and tubers crop categories, in part because how it is handled in the post harvest process. Cassava is grown mostly for subsistence and is the main source of calories for over 500 million people and providing a source of livelihood for about 300 million others across Sub-Saharan Africa. The crop has enormous commercial potential. Its derivatives can be used in dozens of industries from food production to pharmaceuticals to bioethanol, which remains largely intact in Sub-Saharan Africa. Capitalizing on its industrial potential would generate additional income for smallholder farmers, drive domestic industrial growth and job creation and reduce reliance on imported commodities like wheat, starch and ethanol. Commercial production of cassava is properly organized, if properly organized would uplift the economic and social well-being of thousands of rural communities and contribute to national food security in affected countries. Despite the enormous economic potential, post harvest losses have plagued various stages of its supply chain, I mean cassava supply chain. Take Nigeria for example, the largest producer of cassava globally, yet post harvest losses are estimated at 40 percent. 40 percent of all cassava produced in Nigeria is lost every year and with an estimated economic value of 850 million dollars a year. Of this amount, approximately 35 percent is lost in the form of, is lost in the form of Garry during marketing. 24 percent is lost fresh at the farm gate. Another 24 percent is lost fresh during processing. 10 percent is lost as Garry during processing and 5 percent is lost as starch during storage and processing. Such high losses are driven by the nature of the cassava crop. It has a short shelf life of 24, 48 hours after harvest, requiring rapid access to markets for the fresh produce or for processing. These losses are further exacerbated by lack of effective infrastructure to enable efficient handling and transportation. Recently, Nigeria's processors are experiencing an upsurge in demand for cassava derivatives by large commercial conglomerates serving the regional markets. Which promises to revolutionize cassava as a new cash crop for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. It's a great opportunity. However, the farmers are unable to meet the latent demand as the short shelf life, poor infrastructure and even lack of awareness on impeding issues increases the cost and complexity of securing a consistent supply from smallholder farmers. With only 10 percent of Nigeria's cassava currently being processed, there is a huge potential to capitalize on their proven success in production driven by smallholder farmers to encourage the processing of value added products like cassava chips, cassava starch and cassava flour among others. In keeping with the foundation's rich history in innovation, we are excited to invest in a challenge that will provide financial and technical support, both financial and technical support to novel solutions from across the world to tackle one or more of the following barriers, three areas we are focusing on. First is access to existing cassava varieties. Through cassava varieties with extended shelf life exists. Farmers have little access and knowledge about them. So there is an issue of awareness of what is already out there. And this is due to lack of reliable commercial supply system in Nigeria. So it's not really reaching them. Number two, we are also focusing on effective preservation between harvest and processing. Inefficient harvesting, as well as poor handling storage and transport, usually damages roots or leaves them exposed and reduces starch content and shelf life. And third, the one challenge is the distant and inefficient processing. The available cassava processors are located far from the farm and used in efficient manual peeling methods. So how can we also bring processing closer to the farm and produce? So the challenge winners will also receive technical assistance in business development and product design to catalyze and scale innovations at the intersection of agriculture and technology. Through the challenge, we aim to galvanize solutions that could revolutionize the cassava industry in Nigeria and globally, improve food security in the country and the region, and yield economic benefits to small older farmers. So my friend here, James Mwangi from Dalberg, who have been partnering with us in developing this challenge, will give you more detail about how this challenge works. Thank you very much. That is fantastic. I hope you got the story. I'd like to understand, is each grant a million dollars? No, it's a total price of one million, a really to support the winning solution, but James will give you more detail. Maybe James, if you can just please share with us, why are you on board? Thank you very much, Mamadou, and thank you, Yemi. And once again, my name is James Mwangi. I'm executive director of the Dalberg Group. And on behalf of Dalberg, it is a real pleasure and a privilege to be partnering with Rockefeller on this initiative. Dalberg over the last few years has worked extensively on questions in the agricultural space, looking at a range of actors and helping improve agricultural performance across Africa, and increasingly with a particular focus on Nigeria because of its large population size. It's increasing focus on agriculture and the huge potential for agricultural processing in the country. Working with the Rockefeller Foundation on the yield-wise initiative, it provides an opportunity to take a new approach to creating partnerships and starting to address some of the issues we've heard from Mamadou about how much of Africa's agricultural produce is actually lost between the farm and the consumer. Specifically, we are now working on this Kassava Innovation Challenge. Again, targeting the question of food loss, where Rockefeller has been a real leader in trying to come up with innovative solutions to actually not only just increase yields across Africa, but address the fact that so much of Africa's agricultural yield is lost before it's ever consumed. And so with an eye to Kassava specifically, we are launching this challenge officially today. And those wishing to enter the challenge will be able to find information on it on the Rockefeller website, www.rockefellerfoundation.org. And it is open for applications until the 8th of July, 2016, so just over two months or so. The application form is going to be quite simple, two pages, looking at basic information on the applicants and organizations rather than individuals. So rather, looking at basically for mission from the applicants. Organizations rather than individuals are eligible to apply. And there will be a lot of information on the rules and eligibility criteria on the website. I do want to say that intriguing thing here is less about, I mean, it's a substantial price, but we're trying to be innovative by saying, let's actually not just pick one or two solutions that we're aware of. If we look at the questions around the varieties of Kassava, the questions of preservation, the questions of distance and inefficient processing, how do we actually attract innovators and entrepreneurs from around the world, innovative organizations from around the world to bring their best ideas to the fore and that the best ideas, the highest performing ideas, win. In that, we will be working very closely with our partners at IITA and with ourselves at Dauburg. And we have deep experience, both in the agricultural sector in general and in the unique challenges of Kassava in particular. And also applying that specifically to Nigeria. Again, Nigeria is a critical market. Kassava is the crop, but the idea is really tracking innovations that may be applied elsewhere on completely unrelated areas but could meaningfully have impact on the Kassava question. After the initial applications, we'll inform the successful applicants by the end of July, 31st of July, and they will be invited to submit a full application. At that point, we will then run a process until August. By the 26th of August, we'll expect to get full applications from our finalists. And we hope to announce the challenge winners in October of 2016. Our fervent hope is that we will get a real diversity of applications in the coming months, across different kinds of business models, organization types, solution approaches, and so on, to really raise the returns that we're getting off of this crucial crop across Africa. That's fantastic. Thank you so much, James. Okay. I already have questions. I'm sure you do too. But before we dig in, I'd love to invite Sridhar as an export trading organization. You're clearly one of the stakeholders of what this challenge is working on. It'd be great to hear your perspectives. Thank you, Yemi, for giving me an opportunity to present this case here. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am Sridhar. I am, ladies and gentlemen, sorry I missed you. Sorry. Yeah, we have a few ladies here. You can see on the camera, hi, ladies. But we do have both ladies and gentlemen. Yes, please. More ladies than gentlemen. Okay. I missed it. That's fine. I'm Sridhar, a director of projects from ETG, a conglomerate involved in agriculture procurement, processing, transportation, import, export, and distribution. A complete value chain of agricultural commodities. We handled approximately 5 million tons of commodities last year. Incidentally, cassava is the second most consumed and cultivated crop in Africa. And that did find that much important place in that 5 million tons, what we moved. Because of problems, what they are, they have come up to address today. That's one of the biggest challenges we have in this product, particular product. It has a peculiarity it has a peculiarity by itself. The crop can remain under the ground for four years, no issues. But once you harvest it, it stays alive for only 48 hours. So, it is not like any other commodities where we use the hub and spoke operations where you need to procure goods, store it in a place, accumulate it, move it. We can't do this here. Both myself as an operator and the farmer as an engineer, look at each other with desperation. We can't do anything about this crop. But this is the major crop in Africa. Cassava has such a kind of importance in Africa, not only I'll tell you, if you look at the case, cassava defines the poverty of a country. This is what I will sell. In Africa, the cassava productivity is approximately 10 tons barring Nigeria where they are far ahead. Other countries, they are approximately 10 tons. The countries are in poverty. In Latin America, the productivity of cassava is approximately 15 tons per hectare. They are food self-sufficient. In Far East Asia and India, if you look at it, the yield per hectare of cassava is between 25 to 45 tons. Unbelievable. And they are in the field. It has transformed them. A simple equation, cassava in the hands, if he gets 10 tons a hectare, his annual income is $500. If the farmer is able to get 25 tons, it becomes $3,500. That's the difference. The farmer is not able to produce, is not willing to produce, because there's no buyer. I'm not buying because I can't process it. I can't move it. The logistics are a big problem. The solution, where to find? Cassava, we as industrial people, we have normally no where the demand comes from. What the industrial future is? Where to put our money? We look at cassava as a very, very strategic product in our list of products what we handle. However, we are perplexed how to handle it. The latest study by McKinsey, the lines on the move, talked about an immense migration, urban migration of African population leading to middle income growth. That means middle income population growth in Africa, which is non-existent at present stages. What it implies, a middle income group comes into a continent means they don't want to go to the basic food materials. They need a semi-processed or a processed food. And Africans have been eating cassava for long and they love the product. How to process it and make it semi-processed, make it available to them. There is going to be a very great demand. Forget about export of cassava starch to Europe, cassava chips for animal feed to Africa, China, forget it. The cassava is going to be the basic food need and that has to be circulated within Africa. We need to process it, but we have an impediment of not able to process it, not able to procure it and move it. The logistics is an impediment. Here only, I stand up and salute Rockefeller Foundation for throwing open this challenge fund. It is going to induce people. Put up some idea. Think about it. Bring out something. I will cite one example of it which we take for granted. When innovation comes, we don't recognize how it comes, where it came, what is the use of it. We all love to eat cone ice cream. Before 1904, cone ice cream was used to be served in cups, glass cups, plastic cups or some way. In 1904, at St. Louis Food Fair, World Fair, one gentleman called Ernest Humvee was selling ice cream. He ran out of the cups. He didn't know what to do. Next to him, another guy was selling, what do you call, waffles. He ran to him, picked up waffles, made a cone, packed ice cream and gave it. People eat ice cream along with the waffles. We don't know how much that one single act has changed the society. Forget about all other things. Garbage. The kind of garbage it would have generated, it has solved that one single idea. That is what we are looking at as the response from the people, individuals, institutions, organizations, scientists, whosoever it may be. The challenge is open. It's like a lottery ticket, gentlemen. You provide an idea, you get a million dollars. courtesy Rockefeller Foundation. Thank you, sir. That is brilliant. Thank you so much. And I request at the end of this, I make one small request to my press fraternity. Kindly spread this message. We do not know where that earnest who is going to give the solution is sitting in, which country, which village, we do not know. Like Rockefeller Foundation, we as a guys, a commodity guy who is interested in cassava, earnestly looking for that earnest here to come out with a solution and addresses. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, ladies. Thank you so much for that. Thank you. He corrected himself there. That's brilliant. Okay. Do we have questions? If you have a questions, I can see hands. Very good. We'll come to you shortly. I have a couple of questions first. And James, for you, just a clarification. Applicants can come from any country? Anywhere in the world. Yes. Okay. Wow. All right. Fantastic. Thank you. Second question to clarify. Mamadi. You talked about the the estimated value of crops that are lost in Nigeria, cassava, at about 850 million. Now, that's Nigeria alone. So other producers, surely the number will add up to several billions. You know, what you need to know is that here, cassava is the largest produced crop in Africa. So, and this is not just in Nigeria, but Nigeria is the biggest one. Okay. So the aggregate goes to several billions. And which actually, if you compare to the billions, 43 billions that we spend every year to import food on the continent. So we are focusing where the losses are highest in Nigeria. But this solution eventually will trickle down to all cassava producing countries on the continent and beyond. That is brilliant. I've got my marching orders. That sounds compelling enough for me. The deadline is the 8th of July, 2016. So we have just under eight weeks to solve a multi-billion-dollar problem. To clarify, Yemi, that's a deadline for the initial application. I know, I know. It's a deadline for the first phase. We'll get the winners in October. But if you don't get in the first phase, well, the train has left the station. So you have less than eight weeks. Now, we need to help people who want to apply. So I'm sure you have questions that can help them understand this and questions that can help you write stories. Can we get a microphone, please, to the gentleman in the front? Thank you. My name is Niyi Adeyubibi. I'm from the Nair of Africa. Your microphone is closer to your mouth, please. Okay. I'm Niyi from the Nair of Africa. I want to ask, we've talked about the challenges and the specific types of innovation you're looking at for the challenge. Who wants to take that? No, I can take that. And we have identified a number of challenges that are driving loss in the cassava. As we said, one is around planting materials because this can be improved to actually address also the shelf life. That's one area. And as we said earlier, some research has already done some progress on that. And some of these types of planting materials are available, but not getting into the hands of the farmers. So that is also one other challenge. And the other one is around preservation. Their technology is actually that can help increase the shelf life during storage. What those solutions are? Are they chemical? Are they mechanical? Which ones are they? The other area is addressing the transportation or processing. How do you get processing closer to the product? Because the other thing that we need to know is that cassava is highly comprised of water. Over 70% is water. So basically transporting cassava is also an inefficiency because you are virtually paying to transport water. So one of the things is when you bring processing closer to the farm, then also that is one of the aspects of addressing not just the shelf life issue, but also efficiency around handling the product in the value chain. So it's solutions that would help address the issue around those three main areas that are mostly driving the loss. Thank you. Okay. Can we just, I think we should take a few questions because I saw some hands earlier. So if you have a question, I'd like to see your hand. Get a microphone there please. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Harriet. I work for Channel Salvation Lagos, Nigeria. My question is general and still an offshoot from what you asked. The challenge you say is open to everybody, but what would be used, would everybody be given a fair chance to show what form of innovation it is that they have that want to present for us to preserve cassava? All right. Thank you. That's a great question. I want to see if there's another question to take at this time. If you have a question, thank you. Can we get a mic there please? Hi. I'm Kanika Seigl from African Business Magazine. I just had a simple question, just wanting to ask, why is the challenge open to institutions as opposed to individuals? Great question. I'm happy to take one more because we're short on time. So if you do have a burning question that will help get the story out, please put your hand up. Okay. Let's go with those two questions. So first question, will people have a fair chance to show what kind of solutions and models they're proposing? I think that's a great question. I think the commitment that we have as Dalberg with our partners at IITA is we will be focusing on the underlying facts. So we'll be looking at the actual concept of the idea and the actual measurable impact it can have. So really the question of who you are is not the question of who you are the question. It's really about what is the measurable impact that you can potentially have. And that's where the technical expertise both around understanding the market but also understanding the crop and the details around the nature of the crop will be applied to assessing each idea. Great. Thank you very much. So the second question, I know who wants that, why is this open to institutions and not individuals? Okay. This is mostly related to how we can actually, when we have the solution, work it. Because one of the ways is also that the solution needs to be, we would like it to be institutionalized if you wish. And we know that the innovation might come from individuals as well. But how these individuals who have great ideas can also work with institutions that can provide the platform for really driving the solutions the solution further. So individuals can also work with institutions to participate in this. It's not exclusive. Thank you very much. We have another question. Monsieur Petier, just in relation to the comment that you just made, what happens if an individual in a village somewhere comes up with a great idea? How can they be assured that they'll get a cut? Because, you know, we do hear of big corporates taking ideas and then usurping them. And yeah, and then the individual doesn't get a cut. Okay. Who would like to take that question? Or do we have another question? Because we're running short of time. Okay. I think it's a great question. How can we guarantee, I guess, effectively the intellectual property of the person with the idea? Mm-hmm. No, I think that's a very, very, very important question. And this is a, we would like also to really ensure that where the ideas come, because we will be looking at the origination of the idea as well. But as Jim said, we will, initially, there are different criterias to choose. The choice of the solution will depend on the impact and the solution, certain characteristics associated with the idea. But once we actually select or the jury, let me say, that will be put in place, selects the best idea, then actually there is a whole process that we will go through. And I can guarantee that in this process, we will make sure that everyone who is associated with this actually will be recognized. So, yes. Okay. Thank you so much. We have precious little time left. There will be time to interact with them once we are done. So this is an advantage you have for being physically here, as opposed to our audience online. At this point, I'd like to invite our panelists to please maybe share some closing thoughts, if we can brief just so that we can let everybody go on time. Maybe about 60 seconds each, if you like. See that? Yeah. I will reiterate the points which I made again on that. We as a people who are in the industry who see this potential an African made to be served in Africa, but there is no way we can do it when we are looking at a peculiar situation. This kind of a fund which is coming in, giving a grant, giving a challenge fund to open up some ideas, break up some brilliant things to come out. It's a wonderful thing can happen. And I request all the people to take part. They need to propagate the message first. We do not know where from the idea will come, which will be a million dollar idea. That's what. Brilliant. Thank you very much. James. I think for my part, it's to emphasize two things. I think that the very nature of innovation is that often it comes from sectors that haven't been directly involved in an area of finally paying attention to it. And we hope that people in other geographies or other sectors, once they understand some of the challenges around Kassava, we'll find that some of the tools and capabilities that they've been building, in the way that the waffle cone, for example, came about, we'll see that there are applications to what they've been doing in the Kassava space. So the wider the group and the net that we cast the better, that does demand then that our due diligence and our evaluation of ideas be both broad minded, fair and factual. And I think there's been a number of questions raised about that. And we're being very careful to construct a process that's really about digging into and understanding the idea and really assessing its value and testing its viability. But in that process, of course, it'll give us real clarity on who came up with the idea and who's working on it. So we will have a lot of visibility into the idea and we'll work very hard to make sure that this, if it's going to work as an incentive for the future, it needs to encourage new people to bring ideas. That doesn't happen if we end up recognizing the wrong person or recognizing something that doesn't work. So we're very much focused on exactly working hard to do our due diligence, get down to the right person and act and recognize the right thing. Thank you very much. After, of course, thanking very much our partners, particularly Dahlberg and IITA and Shree. I would like, and of course, the World Economic Forum for facilitating this. I would like to say that humanity has always find ways to address the biggest challenges that it has faced. That's also part of human history. And I think that we have come to a place where actually, with growth of population and the challenge around prosperity, the challenge around health, the challenge around sustainability and environment really posh harvest loss becomes one of the biggest and most serious issues of our time. A long overlooked problem. And particularly for Africa. Most of us would think that if you think about food security challenges on the continent, you would think that Africa has a gap in production. By the way, that is not true. Africa produces more than its needs. Africa produces a surplus of 30%. But we face those challenges because 60% of that production is lost. And that cassava is the biggest driver for that. I spoke earlier about the importance of that crop in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere also in the world. So addressing the main challenge, not the only, but the main challenge around cassava which is its shelf life will have the huge impact. I think that it's an idea, a challenge that is beyond one million dollar. It's an incentive. It's something that will help work the solution. But I think really the biggest price is the impact that the solution will make to the continent and to humanity. So thanks also ladies and gentlemen from the press for really spreading the world. Thank you so much Mamadou. Thank you very much. All right. The ball is in your court. Members of the fourth estate. I would like to thank our panelists. I'd like to thank especially of course the Rockefeller Foundation. I of course have to correct myself at least twice. So the first correction is of course James the CEO of Dalberg, Executive Director. I'd like to thank of course Sridhar who's the Director of Projects at ETG and Mamadou who is the Managing Director for the Africa Region and Rockefeller Foundation. The second correction is I invited you here to discuss a million dollar challenge. It's obviously a multi-billion dollar challenge. So thank you for your attention. We understand now as Sridhar pointed out that this is also a mystery an agricultural mystery where something can stay in good condition for four years on the ground and then within 48 hours it perishes. So you can call it a conspiracy theory of sorts but we're all together now to try and unlock one of the largest agricultural constraints to Africa's growth. Thank you so much for joining us.