The Africa Climate Summit brought together several heads of state and government, ministers and UN leaders from Africa, Europe and the US. The BKMC was represented in Nairobi by Co-chair Ban Ki-moon and CEO Monika Froehler with three official side-events in collaboration with FAO, PACJA, and UNDP focusing on providing a platform to young and women smallholder farmers as well as agricultural research institutions such as CGIAR to talk about the biggest current challenges and real solutions. Panelists included Ban Ki-moon, Dr. Abebe Haile-Gabriel, FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Africa, Hon. Girma Amente, Minister of Agriculture, Ethiopia, Hon. Eamon Ryan, Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications of Ireland and more.
In 2009, the G20 countries pledged to accelerate their efforts to reduce emissions and provide $100bn in annual climate finance for developing countries by 2020, which has not been met as of today. We need to live up to the 100 billion pledge for adaptation and mitigation efforts. To ensure food security, adaptation finance needs to be doubled. Especially to agricultural adaptation. In this context, Ban Ki-moon said “If global leaders invest in agricultural research and innovation, we can achieve this goal. Channeling more funding to global networks like CGIAR, will accelerate the development of technologies that can be adopted by the most vulnerable smallholder farmers.”
Ban Ki-moon Centre CEO Monika Froehler and panelists during side event at Africa Climate Week.
If we really want to tackle the climate crisis, we need to put people at the center of all our conversations and efforts. As Africa is the world’s most affected continent by climate change and many countries are highly dependent on agriculture, supporting and building the resilience of smallholder farmers, especially women and youth, is needed now more than ever. In her speech BKMC CEO Froehler emphasized, “It is our call to build the bridges between all those different stakeholders and encourage global leaders to take bold action and continuously sharpen their focus on the most vulnerable to the climate crisis – and this substantially includes smallholder farmers.”
Meeting more than twenty Ban Ki-moon Centre changemakers from all over Africa who take action for climate change on a local, regional and international level, Ban Ki-moon voiced a clear message throughout the summit “This is our opportunity to call on global leaders, decision makers and changemakers alike to support research institutes to innovate, develop, and disseminate solutions to make climate-resilient, sustainable agriculture the most attractive and widely adopted option for smallholder farmers everywhere by 2030.”
Following the Africa Climate Summit, the BKMC will work to galvanize multistakeholder support around The BKMC Youth AgriChampions and bring their demands to COP28 in Dubai later this year. “Visionary and proactive partnerships must be at the heart of our efforts in the transformation of the agricultural sector for the benefit of those on the frontline of climate change.”
