 Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed guests, distinguished participants here and online, good morning. I am Rana Fahoury. I'm the lead of the Agdee Food Systems Transformation Accelerator from UNIDO and I will be today's moderator. It is my pleasure to welcome each one of you to this side event focused on supporting Africa to build climate resilient food systems. Today we convene with a shared commitment to addressing one of the most pressing challenges of our time, ensuring food security in the face of a changing climate. We find ourselves at a critical interval where the impacts of climate change are acutely felt across the African continent. From unpredictable weather patterns to the increasing number and frequency of extreme events, the effects are evident, particularly for agriculture and food production. It is against this backdrop that our collective efforts take on heightened significance. This event provides a platform for knowledge exchange, innovation and collaboration. We are joined today by esteemed guests who bring a wealth of experience and insights to the table. Ms. Agnes Kalibata, President Agra, will be giving the opening remarks, will be then joined by three distinguished panelists, Mr. Luhua, Deputy Director General, Department of Technical Cooperation, IAEA, Ms. Sanda Huera-Mugasa, Global CEO, Fair Trade International, and Mr. DeGene Tezera, Director, Division of Agribusiness and Infrastructure Development, UNIDO. Over the course of the next one hour, we aim to uncover some of the sustainable solutions, identify best practices and explore avenues for partnership. I encourage you all to actively participate and please share your insights. Once again, I extend my warmest welcome to all of you. Allow me now to invite Ms. Agnes Kalibata, President of Agra, to give the opening remarks. Thank you. Thank you and good morning to everyone. It's really good to be here as we get close to the food day, as we might call it. Many of you that have been working in the food sector must be very excited about what is happening today. With over 150 now countries that have signed the Emirates Declaration on Food Systems, which is very exciting, something we are very excited about, but of course a little bit of mixed feelings because the whole idea of signing the Emirates Declaration of Food Systems was that we start making the journey into COP conversations and GSTs and really have a firm ground on what is happening, recognizing that food systems need to transform. So yes, that journey is going to continue on the outside while waiting to be on the inside. On the part that we are meeting about today regarding our partnership but also interest in the transformation of food systems, I've been working in this sector forever, as far as I can remember. One of the things that hasn't moved in this sector is how we engage with producers, is how producers find value for being producers. I don't think people go to produce food just to feed themselves. Part of the world they come from, production systems are also part of economies, incomes for households, livelihoods improvement, and the only way you get to do that is if you create value beyond people feeding themselves, beyond subsistence, and we've struggled with this forever. Never mind that the rest of the world has figured out how to do it. So it's not about technologies because the world is doing it. It's not about capacities because the world is full of capacities, but it's about how we bring things together, the intentionality. So today we are looking forward to building a partnership that builds on all the efforts that UNIDO has consolidated in its work, working around the world to understand how industrialization works in the agriculture sector. We really are hoping that this partnership can take us to the next level in terms of knowledge, in terms of intentionality, in terms of collaboration, but also in terms of creating value for small order farmers that live in food systems, because they don't go to farms so that they can feed themselves. They go to farms so that they can create a livelihood, and we have not been able to do that. We have not been able to create that value for them. So let's come at this with new energy, with new commitment from all of us, because Agra alone can't do it. We work on the downstream side trying to create value around farmers, but there's no value that is not built on the right incentives. For me, industrialization is the right incentive. For me, this partnership is about building, piggybacking on someone that has huge shoulders. You want to step on your shoulders and jump to the next level. So really we are looking forward to what this partnership can bring. We look forward to, beyond your need of partnering with all of you in the ecosystem, that do care about how the agriculture sector can work for farmers, small order farmers, especially, by giving them value. So I'm excited about the partnership we are going to be building around here tonight. This evening, ah, morning actually. This morning, I've been around for too long, you see, I'm getting lost. And you forget it's a weekend, it's morning, it's evening, but that's the excitement of the food system. So we really are excited and happy to be part of this. And we look forward to our partnership with you all and also with UNIDO. So thank you for being part of this. And we look forward to continuing the journey of getting food systems on mainstream co-op conversations and mainstream co-op discussions and moving African farmers to agroindustrialization, which everybody has done except us. So we look forward. So thank you very much, Ms. Kalibata. Today we will have actually the signing ceremony of the MOU memorandum of understanding between UNIDO and Agra. Very much inspired from the COP28, from today's event. This focus on strengthening the resilience of food systems in selected African countries. It focuses on technology rollout, on capacity strengthening for enhanced food chain performance, and of course on the generation of sustainable employment opportunities in food systems. We couldn't be happier to host the signing ceremony at COP28 in today's side event. Okay. Let's turn now to our three distinguished panelists with the same question actually to all of you. From your perspective, what are the systemic challenges in enhancing adaptive capacity and building climate resilience in food systems in Africa? I will start with Mr. Louvoir. Thank you very much. First, I'm very happy to join this side event. I would like to say from IAEA point of view, we are not only the nuclear watchdog for the non-prophylation, but also IAEA has a very important role to develop sustainable development. So we also are developing agencies in different professional areas like nuclear power, like public health, radiation medicine against cancer, and also agriculture is one of the important areas. So IAEA can play a more very important role for the different challenges of climate change, but today I would like to say one of the important topic is the capacity building for the professional people in Africa. So I think in Africa we have a lot of human resources, but we need more professional people to understand how the nuclear technology can use in the food security. Since the nuclear can use in the food security areas for the plant mutation breeding, the soil and the water management, the animal production and the health, food safety, and a lot of areas, but these need the technology, need professional people, and combined with the conventional approach together. So the nuclear engineers understanding how to use the nuclear technique is very important. From this point, IAEA had a play a very important role through our technical cooperation program to train the African people, more than 1,000 people trained last year, and we have 44 training course and about 6, more than 600, you know, the fellows and scientific scientists, you know, had a scientific visit to the developed countries. So what we will do is to strengthen through our technical cooperation program to support African younger scientists, young engineers to master the nuclear technique and use for the food security areas. Thank you. Thank you. So capacity building is a systemic challenge from the perspective of the IAEA. Turning to Ms. Ueda Murasa with the same question, what are the systemic challenges from your perspectives? Yeah, thank you very much for that interesting question. I would like to tackle it by addressing the elephants in the room. While we talk about climate adaptation mechanisms, it's important to recognize that these mechanisms would be implemented by the most critical players in a supply chain, those who are at the bottom of the supply chain, and these are the producers, the farmers and workers. One of the key challenges they're facing right now is the fact that we do not have fair prices for the products that are sold on the market, nor do we have responsible purchasing practices. Right, as we keep on discussing about climate adaptation measures to implement resilience for farmers and workers, the cost of sustainable production, the cost of implementing these mechanisms at the grassroot level actually very high, and they far outweigh, at way, the economic benefits for the producers and the farmers. So it's very difficult to encourage or incentivize farmers to invest in sophisticated climate solutions at the production end. Farmers work with everyday income resources that we call friction income that meet their basic requirements in terms of food, clothing and shelter. Not much of it can actually be transposed into a decent livelihood because apart from trying to build their own business operations, they also have to think about putting food on the table, taking their children to school, addressing challenges such as taking their children to hospital and the like, and this income that they receive when they're selling their products isn't actually enough. As Fair Trade International, one of our key components is to work with companies that are looking at building corporate shared value, responsible business practices. These companies purchase products at a fair price. They sell them at a fair price. In the market, they also build a fair premium. This premium is transferred back to the producers, and the producers are able to take those premiums and independently agree on how they will invest them back into their livelihoods, into their business operations and their ecosystems. Not all businesses think like this. A large number of the businesses in our markets are focused on cost leadership. But with the upcoming, with the engagement and the enforcement of the EU legislation across markets that are selling to the EU, the challenges of environment and social governance have come into play. The biggest issue right now is that within those challenges, there's also the climate issues. There's also climate patterns that are affecting businesses. I could give some examples. Just recently, we're discussing with some of our producers who are in Ghana, who are facing challenges of migration because of global warming in the north of Ghana, and they had to actually move. Now, this is directly tied to poverty, because once you move from a farm that you've already cultivated and invested in, you have to start from scratch. And by starting from scratch, it actually reverses your income. It reverses your economic, your social economic situation. And this is a big challenge across the board. So when these businesses are still striving to access markets and sell to the north, but they not actually have the right income resources to meet those legislation requirements, you know, or climate adaptation requirements, such as deforestation, the organic seas, and putting in place all these mechanisms that can help them to meet the purchasing requirements of buyers who are meeting this EU legislation, it becomes a big issue. So just like Dr. Kalibata said, the biggest players in the market are producers, but they're the least hard. And there needs to be an intentional approach in terms of investing in the production cycle within producers and farmers and looking at how they can actually put the best practice, but also listening to their interests. I also wanted to highlight that another key challenge in climate adaptation is involving producers in the solutions. In many cases, and I've heard about this for the past three days, we always talk about technology transfer and getting the best practices from one country and implementing it in another country. It's important to recognize that we have traditional knowledge that is honed within the producers. They understand best what is best, what works for their realities. And it's important that you recognize that. If anything, we should be looking at climate finance to enhance the existing traditional knowledge and make it better and fit for purpose for the farmers because there is no use in setting up a technological system that will not have ownership and commitment. It will not be sustainable. So it's important that a solution that is set up, a climate adaptation solution set up for producers, farmers and workers must be built with the farmers and workers, with the producers themselves. That is the only way it can actually be sustainable. And the knowledge is there. The knowledge is based on realities on the ground. I'd also like to highlight that climate finance today, as a whole, climate financial flows are very limited in terms of what it's dedicated to the agriculture sector. My latest estimates show that about 27% has been dedicated to the agriculture sector. And even within that percentage, very little dedicated to productive capacity to producers, farmers and workers. We need to up that number. The agriculture is the bedrock of a lot of industries. The manufacturing sector is built on agriculture. The tourism sector survives on agriculture. The pharmaceutical sector survives its innovations and whatever we're taking in is actually built on agriculture. And so it's important to recognize how critical agriculture and agriculture ecosystems are across the board. And if climate challenges are going to reduce the future of food, then we really have to pay a critical eye on how to strengthen this particular space. So my call here is a climate action needs to look at agriculture. But most importantly, we need to involve producers in this particular aspect. One last point on this one. While I say involving producers, I have noted that the current negotiations that are led by sovereign states, the national member states have very little representation of producers. I'm hoping that in the next COP, and this is really a call that I hope someone can actually put out in the media, in the next COP, we need to have producers as part of the national delegations of the countries that are coming to sit on those tables. We need to have countries engaging with producers with the micro small and medium enterprises and getting their national positions. So they can actually be given a choice to decide on what climate adaptation looks like and what strategic investments should be made through climate finance. Yeah. Thank you very much. Indeed, you tapped on very important aspects which are essentially we cannot have systemic solutions to tackle systemic challenges without embedding these solutions within the system, delivering a track to farmers and saying this has been capacity building will not solve the solution. Indeed, you spoke about capturing tradition knowledge about making sure that you are more comprehensive and bringing in the right actors to the table and really designing solutions that they can deliver themselves, embedding these solutions within the system. Blended financing, including climate financing is of course an important aspect that we cannot deliver with anymore. This is a clear call for all of us. Thank you very much once again and moving now to Mr. Tezera. Again, your insights on systemic challenges for building climate resilient food systems in Africa. Thank you, Rana. The challenges for food systems transition to more sustainable and climate resilient system is many and I try to mention few critical ones where UNIDO is contributing to solve them. The first one is financial constraints, I think. The transition of the food systems requires resources according to UNIDOT about 7.6 trillion dollars. And this is in general what is required at the moment. In the meantime, if we want to go into transition, additional resources required per year are from 350 to 420 billion dollars annually. This is according to UNEP. And the public financial resources or development assistance resources are not sufficient and we have to move more into resources from the private sector to fill these gaps. So, but these finance are in some cases available for the most needed, that is smaller farmers and small and medium enterprises, but accessing them is extremely difficult. So there is a need to have the proper business plan or document to be prepared for accessing the finance and this capacity is not available in most of African countries. So in UNIDOT, we try to work with different financiers to prepare necessary documentation for these smaller scale holders, smaller farmers and the small and medium enterprises to access these finances. So we have established a partnership with international financial institutions like African Development Bank and African Bank. And we work with them to design this program so that resources flow to the most needed to the smaller farmers. So we have dedicated to do this one. The second one is a policy and regulatory framework. As you all know, the policy framework in most of developing countries, specifically in Africa are inconsistent. That is very difficult. Even if there is a consistent policy, the mechanism or the strategy for implementing it on the ground is not available. The roadmaps are not properly articulated and more importantly, the institutional setup for monitoring this policy implementation and adaptation according to the situation is not there. So in UNIDOT also we try to help the African government to have a special purpose vehicle on designing and implementation of these policies. The other one is inefficient, let's say, in fragmented value chains. As you know, also in Africa there are multiple actors from the agricultural production until marketing of product, unnecessarily many. And most of the margin of the value chain goes into these less productive value chain actors along the value chain. And as you mentioned, because of this, the farmers are paid less and the consumers pay more. This makes the whole value chain inefficient. So in UNIDOT also we try to help this market linkages between small order farmers and the agro-industries, agri-processors or wholesalers so that the value chain is more efficient and then that's competitive globally and regionally. The other one is the infrastructure gap. I think, as you all know, about 30% of the food in Africa is wasted. This is more lost instead of waste actually. But this is mainly because of lack of infrastructure whether it's cold storage facilities, dry storage facilities, agro logistics and so on. So in UNIDOT we try to help the government to establish this infrastructure for value addition but also for logistics, storage and marketing. They are reducing as much as possible this post harvest losses. The other thing is also capacity building of the smaller farmers which is so important knowledge. At the moment, most of the extension and knowledge transfer work has been done by government institutions which are usually underfunded and understaffed. So we are trying to create a modality where private and public partnership partner together to deliver a very efficient extension services including technology transfer, knowledge transfer or application of research and development outcomes into the farmers. So these are a few of the areas where we contribute to for the resilient, let's say food systems in Africa. Nice to appear, thank you. Thank you very much Mr. Tezera. Indeed Ms. Murasa touched upon the need for building the capacity of farmers and you touched upon the aspect of building the capacity of farmers for the access for finance because indeed we can talk about blended financing solutions, we can talk about making available grants and loans and collateral facilities but unless we build the capacity of the producers to actually know how to access these maybe work even with the private sector, banking and insurance companies worldwide to make more available insurance products that farmers can rely on because oftentimes these farmers don't even have access to collators to obtain the loans that are being made available for them. Thank you very much for these insights. Now moving to individual questions actually and going back to Deputy Director General of the IAA, Mr. Lu Hua, what is the role? You mentioned the role of nuclear science and technology. What is the role of nuclear science in building climate resilient food systems? If you could kindly give us maybe an example of joint efforts or a multi-stakeholder collaboration where you have seen tangible results produced in this area. Thank you very much. Actually nuclear science technology play a very important role for the climate change. You know the nuclear science technology can provide the valuable resource to identify, analyze, monitor and combine with the climate change. And also you know the nuclear science can increase the agricultural productivity. And also you know for the water management and without any greenhouse gas emission by nuclear technique. I can tell you the nuclear is not to work along but should combine with the conventional approach. One example is you know we use nuclear technique to identify the water content. You know the amount of water in the soil by using we call it cosmic ray neutron sensors. This technology can use to understand what's the amount of water in the soil. So this information can guide the irrigation to the soil. That's very important as you know that. And the other example is plant mutation breeding. We know you know the seed in the space. It's one we send you know the space shuttle is very exciting. We have a seed in the space shuttle that you know is a wonderful you know the achievement of the human kind. But actually we can realize the same thing. You know the in the earth by radiation you know the radiation technology to make a plant mutation breeding. To make this you know the seed is more resilience to the to the charge to the to the to the any disease. That's you know is a plant mutation technology. So that's you know is a very important in different areas for you. I can tell you you know the in Africa areas our TC program spend almost the 40% of our resource in agriculture areas. So we have our TC program to support different areas but agriculture in Africa is most important areas in IAEA. Regarding the international cooperation I think I think I can give you a very good example. IAEA currently they know that in Oxford we joined the launch at home for food initiative by our DG grocery and the DG Chi in FAO in World Food Day. So during the joint launch we say you know that IAEA FAO will work on cope improvement animal production, soil and the water management insect past control, food safety and the public health and the nutrition. So these the cooperation areas will promote our good cooperation. Since IAEA FAO has 30 for 60 years 60 case of cap cooperation. We have a joint research center located in Vienna you know but either people from FAO and IAEA nuclear people together as a joint center for nuclear technique in the agriculture areas. So these joint center play a very important role in the past 60 years to study how nuclear technique can use in the agriculture areas and they make a very good progress. That's a very good cooperation and a very good partnership. We also hope nuclear can work with like UNIDO like you know the international financial institutions. We already discussed with the regional development bank how you know the financial people support you know the nuclear technique using the in agriculture areas for the climate change purpose. So I think it's very important to establish a partnership by different stakeholders for the same target. So in summary you know by combining nuclear technique with the conventional approach and through meaningful tested partnership IAEA make an important contribution to build a climate resident food system among the world. Thank you. Thank you very much for this intervention. Thank you indeed long ago we stopped working in silos and hopefully this is also the message we take away today that we do need to work together also as UN organizations in addition to external partners. UNIDO is also working with the agency NFAO on actually extending you know nuclear technology to food safety again for Africa. Indeed this is a very important thing. Testing soil testing and having the technology actually extended for this. Oftentimes you have solutions that are focused on crops but then we overlook the health of the soil and this is also something that we can of course bring to Africa and have it as one of the solutions to tackle some of the more systemic challenges. Ms. Mugazo you mentioned fair prices and of course fair food systems are needed for future food security. Could you tell us more about fair trades newly launched sustainable agricultural policy that goes for resilient food systems based on agroecology and how does this policy support farmers to navigate climate impacts? So our new sustainable agricultural policy specifically focuses on agroecology like you rightly put it. It looks at the current narrative of food systems and puts in a human centric side to it. We address the people behind the food. We address the practices of the people behind the food the producers, the farmers, the workers. We try to translate that into how it pushes for more sustainability within the production cycle. We also try to see how we also try to inform a narrative and an engagement with policy makers about why it's important to not just invest in value chains but to also invest in the people who are working within the value chains. By virtue of who we are as fair trade we are a body that sets up risk based mechanisms that identify challenges in forced labor, child labor practices. We address governance. We try and strengthen good governance within the business operations of producers. We also try and address issues such as gender based violence. We also pick up on ensuring that youth and gender are included within the network of business operations for producers. So we are now humanizing. We bring a human centric approach to food systems, food and food systems in general. This is very important because in many different cases the aspect of fair prices comes into play. In many countries you find that minimum wage differs for example for high labor across the board depending on the political dynamics or even the cost of inflation and so many other challenges within each country's national political ecosystem. And this also comes into play when it comes to living income. So we actually enforce a fair trade minimum price. We also enforce living income requirements and we also ensure that when you are, when you're working within the fair trade community you're ensuring that your staff, your producers are being paid a minimum threshold of living income that doesn't, that still gives them the decent livelihood expected meaning they're able to meet food, clothing, shelter and basic requirements within the businesses that they're operating in. This is very important but we don't do this alone. Again, I am still coming back to the multi-stakeholder aspect. Even as we look at climate action and climate solutions we always implore companies that are sourcing from these producers to reinvest back into the supply chain, to invest back into the producers, to look at how they can actually put in certain mechanisms and systems that can help them diversify out of their traditional cash crops and grow other cash crops that they can sell within their local communities. And this still touches on aspects of crop diversification and also we encourage within the agroecological mechanism we also encourage aspects of looking at circular economy. So how are you able to take one product and get other byproducts out of it and even strengthen the production of that product with other organic matters? So we also look at that, we look at regenerative agriculture within our agroecological policy. So all these components come together but the narrative is pushed forward to very key stakeholders. So we push it up the chain to our buyers, to our corporate commercial partners. We present it to them, we give them an investment plan, we give them project proposals and say let us work with you and different partners to reinvest back into our supply chain. A key example of this is our Sankofa project in Ghana. We have partnered with the International Trade Center, one of our key commercial partners, Korp and Halba who are in Switzerland and working with them we've set up a project under affirmative action that's looking at dynamic agroforestry. Through this project we had a target of setting up about 400 trees, 400 plots of trees within our cocoa farms in Ghana. We have at least made 50% of that. We've encouraged farmers to diversify out of cocoa so they're planting climate resilient products such as yams and other products that are of interest within their local markets. What does this mean? It means that it also contributes to decent livelihoods. Apart from earning a living income from cocoa, which has a very volatile price by the way, it changes every six months, for those of you who know that in West Africa, depending on the political challenges, they're able to also sell local products such as yam that is of high value, high impact and high demand and gain another source of income. We have built this particular ecosystem, so Halba also buys from the cocoa producers so they give a premium but over and above that they also contribute back into the supply chain. And this is the kind of holistic approach we're looking at. So imagine this sort of transformative agriculture model is being done in Ghana. If you could replicate something like this across the board, it would mean that we're encouraging private to private partnerships for good. And they are tying to climate adaptation measures and it's a collective action on climate adaptation measures for good. And this is why I keep on saying we need to involve producers in the narrative of what they actually need on the ground. Another aspect of the agroecological policy is how we engage with women and youth. It's a bit challenging to say this right now but access to finance for women is actually much lower than access to finance for men. When you go to a bank, credit worthiness for women is actually challenged. It's actually five to 10% less than what a man can actually get. And this is interesting. I've worked in the banking sector and it's important to note that women have a high level of trust in the banking sector. They actually have less non-performing loans than men. But then still, this doesn't actually come into play when accessing finance for women. So we need a rights-based approach for improving access to finance for women. We need to be able to encourage them to feel that they can be confident enough to go to a bank and apply for certain learning facilities that can help them boost back better within their agricultural, within their businesses and their production chains. Another thing we're also encouraging in agroecology, again from a human-centric perspective, is bringing youth into the forefront of agriculture. Right now, just yesterday I was having a discussion with a 20-year-old youth who's working in Sri Lanka who has his own farm. And he was telling me that he is training the farmers to diversify out of the farming sector. And I thought he meant to diversify into a related product in the farming sector, but actually said to diversify into tourism. So actually, he's training his farmers to move out of agriculture into tourism, into the services sector. When I asked him why he said in Sri Lanka, we have floods and the floods have destroyed our farms. And we're no longer able to gain an income out of this. So we don't see agriculture as an incentive for us to actually pursue in the future. And this is a group of young farmers. So many young entrepreneurs, young farmers, many of the youth are looking at agriculture as they're not passionate about driving agriculture. This is a direct impact on the future of food and food systems. Because today's generation are the ones who are actually going to drive tomorrow's future in food. And we must tackle these particular challenges and also create incentives, agriculture incentives to maintain the youth within the agriculture sector, especially those who are being impacted by climate challenges such as this. So it's important, we always say, it's important to call on youth to be involved in the agricultural discussion, to be involved in the policy and decision-making processes, to also be involved in accessing climate finance so they can reinvest back into their businesses. So this is something that the agriculture policy always looks at. So we have sustainable agriculture, regenerative agriculture, circular economy. And we also look at the human-centric side of agriculture involving all the players. Maybe my last word to this is something I learned in the, or last word that I learned from a farmer in Merida, a beekeeper. They actually, they came up to us as the fair trade movement and they said, we take, the land gives life to us. The earth gives life to us. So we must give life back to the earth. And I think that is the essence of climate adaptation and climate action. Thank you. Thank you very much. That's a very nice takeaway message. I took so many notes that I can barely see my own notes. Now that's a challenge. I hope the Mr. Desira's question is safe somewhere. But it's a very nice message which he started with, with humanizing food systems. This is a very, very important message. I would pick on another two. Oftentimes we talk about developing food systems, for example, using the value chain approach. We analyze the value chain. We look into the usual economic, environmental, social resilience, of course, as a meta dimension. But oftentimes these value chain reports become very nice glossy on the shelf. When it comes to designing solutions, we drop one of the parameters, one or more parameters. And I think your message here is very important. When you apply a gender lens, do not forget that when you're, for instance, de-risking financial solutions, do apply the gender lens. Remember that there's a discrepancy between women and men accessing, for instance, finance. It couldn't be more to the point on this one. And the other thing is, of course, it's business will be in business for business and it's very important than when we're calling on responsible business behavior. We also think about sustainable business models because otherwise we're not holding for that for much longer. My question to Mr. Tezera, with a focus on sustainable supply chains, climate action and ending hunger, how is UNIDO strategically integrating technology and innovation to foster the resilience of food systems in Africa in the face of climate threats? Thank you, Rana. I think in UNIDO, we try to find a holistic solution for this climate resilience of the food systems and our entry point is always the value addition, the processing and preservation of the food. In Africa, I think about 70 billion dollars worth of food is imported annually. We add only value to 10% of our agricultural produce, of food produced, that means 80% of the food is either consumed at household level or is sold in the local market. There is no value addition, whereas in developed countries about 90% of the food produced is processed industrially. This makes a lot of difference. So in UNIDO, I think we try to unlock the challenges first by investors, mostly small and medium enterprises in food processing sector. These challenges include, for example, raw material. So because of the subsistence nature of the agricultural system, the surplus produced is too small to aggregate to the need of the processing industries. So we work to solve this problem. How do we do that? We have a model of what we call rural transformation centers where smaller farmers bring their produce and then also interact with the private sector. So that in the next seasons they produce raw materials of consistency and quantity required by the private company or the processors. So this creating this linkage between the farmers and the processors will happen at these rural transformation centers. The other one which blocks or which makes investment in agriculture and agro-processing prohibitive is the infrastructure requirement. For individual agro-industries to have a power line or a water line or telecommunication or their own waste treatment plant is extremely high and make it very, let's say, the return investment is too long and very risky investment. So what we have established is a model where the public sector, the government provides all the infrastructure required for the private sector to invest so that they have a common facilities for storage. They don't have to build their own storage facilities. They have common waste treatment plants. They don't have to produce their own which is very, very expensive business. They have also an agro-logistic services which is commonly used by the different industries. And also create symbiosis between the two industries. For example, the waste from one industry can be an input for the other ones while creating circularity in the ecosystem of agro-processing. So by providing this infrastructure and these linkages, the initial investment cost for a private company is reduced up to 90%. So invest only 10% compared to the investment required outside the parks which is about, let's say, 90% more. So this is where we intervene. The other area is partnership. I think it's extremely important. We take the work in a post-harvest handling of the agricultural products. We work with F.O. on agricultural production and productivity. We work with ITC on the marketing part so that we align ourselves along the value chain. We also work with WFP in local value addition so that WFP imports, instead of importing processed food or nutritious food from abroad, they locally produce these products. So adding value, creating jobs at the same time, also creating market for small holder farmers. So our approach is again systematic in such a way that we start helping the smaller farmers, the small and medium enterprises along the value chain and finally attract large-scale investments through partnership with international financial institutions for large-scale investment in agriculture and agribusiness which is critical for most of African countries. I stop here and thank you very much. Thank you very much, Ms. Kalibata, before she left in her opening remarks, she also highlighted the importance of value addition, not to undermine the importance of production and focusing on production. And Ms. Murasa also mentioned the case where farmers are more and more considering diversifying, unfortunately not diversifying by intercropping, diversifying by simply leaving the industry altogether. And indeed value addition is one way to work around these challenges and provide more of course value to the farmers down the road. I open the floor in case there are any questions from our guests. Any questions you would like to address to the panelists? Please, I'll give you the mic one second. Thank you very much. My name's Innocento Mohanj. I come from Uganda and I'm on the Fair Trade Ambassador. My question to Mr. Tezera is about, I talked about African Development Bank helping farmers to build the capacity for financial access. Do you have any package for new innovative farmers from Africa whereby we don't have corridors to access these finances and we are ready to begin or we have challenges of financing our food systems? How are you able to package up that financial assistance or accessibility so that you can help young farmers take up these innovations? Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. It's a very relevant question. As I mentioned at the beginning, I mean it's the biggest challenges. The resources are available. The need is here but there is a gap in how to access these resources I think. For big companies, private companies, it's much easier to go into commercial, let's say, loan or even get access, let's say, from the private window of the international financial institutions or development financial institutions. But for smaller farmers, for these banks, the big banks like African Development Bank, it is a huge transaction cost to go and go to the relatively small need of a smaller farmer, $5,000 or $10,000, even half a million dollar is too small for big banks to go into this detail and work on the transaction cost is high as mentioned. So what we try to do now is to get either the government to take these grant or loan from the banks and then use that local domestic development banks or even commercial banks to have a mechanism to lend this money, to access, to provide this money to sort of the cooperatives or directly to smaller farmers in a very systematic way. Now that is one area where we are working. We are working now in one country in Ethiopia on similar model where $20 million grant money is provided by Italy. We use African Development Bank loan for blended finance to provide services to smaller farmers so that in a revolving mechanism, the resources are, let's say, used or accessed by smaller farmers. But this is a complicated process. It looks very simple. So, but we are working on this direction, I think, in a very short. So we have, as I said, a new innovative finance unit working dedicated for this purpose. Sorry. Thank you very much. This drives my question to, you know, fair trade works with farmers around Africa, that is around 1.3 million farmers or producers. I think fair trade has the capacity to probably work with UNIDO and the African Development Bank. Can we create that partnership to see that through fair trade network of Uganda and Africa, it is able to work with these small farmers because they are organized under fair trade system so that we can easily access this help or access to finance or innovative finance. So, because I see it is very difficult for us to actually access that, but fair trade is there for us and has always worked with producer farmers to see through average their problems. I think, I give that suggestion if it's possible, you can have that partnership with fair trade. Thank you. Very good. We have one. Yes, thank you for that, Innocent. Actually, we're signing an MOU tomorrow with the UNIDO and fair trade tomorrow and this is one of the aspects we'll be picking up on within that MOU. So, we'll take that as a mini project, the first one. Actually, it's actually very exciting when you have a question and then the answer comes with an announcement. It couldn't be better. We have another question from the floor. Please go ahead, introduce yourself, please. Sure, hi there. My name is Jonathan Seid. I'm from Agra, vice president at Agra. I just want to ask the panel about their impressions of how we can strengthen public-private collaboration, not just the dialogue bit, but the actual positive collaboration for the development of value chains in a way that better integrates the processes and links them down through the, you know, whether it's anchor farms or integrated farms that are linking you into smallholders. Just practical models that they've seen that are working well from the private sector side and also the government side, given that many governments struggle with drug governmental coordination and that sort of being led by what the issues are by the private sector and the value chains. Should I? So that's, I think, I could take that question and I'll take it where into, well, from my previous work with, I used to work with the Commessa, Commessa Business Council, which has worked with the Agra previously, and also right now with the dynamics that we have where we are trying to engage with governments. One of the key methods that have always worked are technical work groups that involve the sector, the sector players within the private sector, like if it's let's say maize producers or in our case banana producers or coffee or cocoa producers, working closely with the governments. I always say public-private dialogue has to start at a national level and it's most regimental stage and it has to go through the same negotiation processes as COP28. So there has to be that consultation and alignment and it has to be continuous. The biggest challenge with PPDs that we have seen and also from my past experience is that they are ones off and they're talk shops and they end. So it's important to have that continuous quality control on a quarterly basis with key targets that are looked at, just like you're implementing a project over one to six months and then it has to accumulate at a regional level and also at a global level. Our key gray areas right now as producers within fair trade is that we don't have those mechanisms of setting up public-private dialogues at a national level. So if we were to engage with Agra across Africa, for example, to help Ghana producers, Kenya producers, Uganda, Rwanda and all the countries that you're present to actually put together such engagements with the right policy influencers or policy drivers at a national level, then things would move faster. It would be easier for producer voices to come to the COP28 if it started at a national level and then built regionally and went global. And this is the same mechanism that we're hoping we could engage with UNIDO that has a larger footprint across the world so that we can actually see how to tap into government intervention with producers at a national level. And our advocacy director is actually sitting right behind you and this is one of her key project interventions and engagements. But we're happy to also share the ideal model approach we think would work. This model approach I'm sharing with you is actually producer driven. It's private sector driven. And I think that's why it would work because they would be owning and committing to it. Yeah, so that's the proposal. Mr. Tezera. As I think from our side, I think industrialization happens when private sector invests. That's a basic starting point. But for the private sector to invest, the government has the responsibility to create a condition for that to happen. That is also by itself. But most people think that only the government's business should be only creating in a conducive environment that we say that it is probably correct but there is a need for the government also to invest in the necessary infrastructure for private sector to come. Whether it's a policy, soft infrastructure or hard infrastructure. So from our experience also, we have seen that investment by public sector is usually very difficult. They can do the development part of the work but the management and the operation of this infrastructure should be done by private sector. So you can see that it is public and private sector partnership is extremely important. Not only on a paper, on a policy, on a dialogue level but practically on the ground that this partnership should be that for us also smaller farmers are enterprises. We consider them as a enterprise and businesses. So when we engage with the farmers, we are engaging with the private sector. So any engagement between the private sector but with the smaller farmer and the government is, we call it as a business to government relationship. Any investment also the government does for supporting farmers is a long-term investment by the government for their own, it's on let's say the benefit for the public benefit. So for us we work with the government and a policy framework side and also large-scale infrastructure investment is to act out private sector. All this infrastructure should be led by, by managed by the private sector which is more efficient. About a month ago in the Africa Investment Forum in Marrakesh I think the UNIDO as a part of this alliance for special agro processing zones. We established this alliance where private sector plays extremely important role in agro industrialization process including infrastructure development. So that they have the banks, African Development Bank, African Bank Islamic Development Bank have pledged three billion dollars in the coming 10 years for investment in this agro industrialization process. So it's been a very good example of a public-private partnership. Thank you very much. Any other questions, please, Daniela. Hi, my name is Javier Aliaga. I work at Fair Trade. I have a question for Mr. Tecerra. It's true that transactional costs are so high. This is one problem. One side of the coin, the other side of the coin is the risk and we never talk a lot about risk. And the financial vehicles that we are using at the moment is blend vehicles are reducing the risk due to a lot of grants but we can scale it up with grants. So how, in your opinion, these blend mechanisms will evolve in the coming years to transfer more risk to the private sector in order to rebalance the overall risk of the financial vehicle. Otherwise, we will reduce the risk and the financing will work by grants and grants are not enough for scaling up all farmer needs. I think it's, again, it's a very important point. I think it's also one of the challenges. The solution for this is simple term is blended finance. This is what we try to promote. As you know, farmers probably are the only enterprises globally where they take the risk themselves. There's no de-risking mechanism. If you go into an industries or traders or exporters, they have always an insurance and mechanism for de-risking their business. Farmers, they take a risk and no government or no bank or no financial institutions comes to their help but when they produce, they take the product. That's what happens. I think what we try to do, I think what I said before, this is our model of rural transformation center where the private sector takes a lead, for example, in providing all the needs of the farmers. It's agricultural input, let's say harvesting mechanism, insurance mechanism, crop protection chemicals and all those kind of things are provided by private sector and return to the farmers to provide raw material for this industry. So if the farmers could not produce, the risk is shared by the factories and the farmers. And the government has an interest in this one so that the farmers produce, so they will be part of the risk. So, exactly. So this is the mechanism we are trying to think that in. So the reason I mentioned that for us smaller farmers are enterprises is from this angle so that in a few years time, let's say, our model programs, the farmers are also enterprise and then they have access to finance, they have to have a risky mechanism. The banks which borrow the farmers also take a risk with the farmers. So this is the model we are trying to promote. Thank you very much. Any other questions? I think we are fine. Thank you very much. As we engaged in today's deliberations, let us keep in mind the urgency of our tasks. The outcomes of our discussions have the potential to drive innovations including the risking solutions for finance access and empowering communities. Our collective commitment today can pave the way for a more sustainable and resilient future for the people of Africa. Please join me in applauding the panelists. Thank you very much.