The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), through its Subregional Office for Southern Africa (SFS), convened a regional training workshop on innovative value chain development methodologies from 7 to 9 July in Pretoria, South Africa. The workshop was organized under the European Union (EU)-funded STOSAR II Project, in partnership with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Secretariat and other regional stakeholders.
The two-and-a-half-day workshop brought together 55 national experts and officials from 16 SADC Member States, alongside representatives from FANRPAN, AUDA-NEPAD, SACAU, and other partners committed to advancing agricultural transformation across the region.
In his opening remarks, Dr Lewis Hove, FAO Resilience Team Leader for Southern Africa, who, speaking on behalf of Dr Patrice Talla, the FAO Subregional Coordinator for Southern Africa, underscored the workshop’s significance as a key milestone for STOSAR II:
Dr Hove said, “Today’s workshop marks a significant milestone for STOSAR II. It is one of the first major regional activities under the second phase of the project, and it brings to life a key new focus on Value Chains. This component reflects our collective ambition to turn data and strategies into real improvements along agricultural value chains, leaving no one behind.”
The workshop focused on equipping national experts and officials with the knowledge and tools to develop inclusive, evidence-based, and digitally enabled value chains. Participants explored how instrument-based approaches to investment planning can inform and strengthen National Agricultural Investment Plans (NAIPs) and Sector Development Plan Agreements (SDPAs), ensuring that investments directly support country priorities and the regional agricultural policy framework.
The sessions also highlighted inclusive aggregation systems and the growing role of information and communication technologies (ICT) and artificial intelligence (AI) in value chain development, which are innovations that can help improve market access, agricultural productivity, and sustainable economic opportunities for farmers and agribusinesses.
Strengthening networks and sharing solutions
The workshop further provided a platform to reinforce the SADC’s Community of Practice on Agribusiness, Investment, and Trade, promoting peer learning, dialogue and regional collaboration.
The African Union Development Agency (AU-NEPAD) Head of Agriculture, Dr Manyewu Mutamba, said: “This intervention on value chains is both timely and strategic, as it directly supports the implementation of the CAADP Kampala Declaration on Building Resilient and Sustainable Agrifood Systems by focusing on agro-industrialization, trade, and increased investment in agrifood systems. This training initiative will contribute meaningfully to our shared goal of strengthening sustainable food systems across the continent.”
Throughout the highly interactive sessions, participants shared national experiences, lessons learned and innovations shaping agrifood policy and practice in Southern Africa.
Hands-on demonstrations showcased cutting-edge tools such as FAO’s Ex-Ante Carbon-balance Tool (EX-ACT), the only greenhouse gas accounting tool covering the entire agricultural sector and the RuralInvest toolkit, designed to support the preparation of bankable, sustainable business proposals. Participants also engaged with the latest ICT-enabled innovations from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), including remote sensing and earth observation technologies capable of high-accuracy soil analysis and yield prediction.
A collective path forward
As Southern Africa navigates a complex landscape of challenges and opportunities, the workshop reaffirmed the transformative potential of inclusive and innovative value chains.
With support from the European Union, FAO and its partners are working hand-in-hand with national experts to help them lead this transformation and shaping agri-food systems that are more productive, resilient and inclusive.
Continued collaboration will be key to transforming value chains into engines of resilience, growth and investment of a food-secure Southern Africa that leaves no one behind.
Africa Fact: The ancient Egyptians had the same type of tropically adapted skeletal proportions as modern Black Africans. A 2003 paper appeared in American Journal of Physical Anthropology by Dr Sonia Zakrzewski entitled Variation in Ancient Egyptian Stature and Body Proportions where she states that: “The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the ‘super-Negroid’ body plan described by Robins (1983). The values for the brachial and crural indices show that the distal segments of each limb are longer relative to the proximal segments than in many ‘African’ populations.”
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Fun South African Fact: South Africa has one of the world’s most luxurious trains.
Old Regret
Fun South African Fact: South Africa has hosted the football (2010), cricket (2003) and rugby (1995) world cups