As the leaders gather in Kigali, Rwanda, for the African Food Systems Forum (AFSF), discussions about how to invest in resilient food systems will take place against a backdrop of geopolitical instability. Sierra Leone and Norway will join African and other leading representatives of governments, business, investors, and civil society to discuss a crucial topic: how to ensure resilience and sustainability of food systems?
This Forum, which marks 20 years since it was born at the African Green Revolution conference hosted by the Norwegian fertilizer company Yara in Oslo in 2006, takes place against a backdrop of growing geopolitical conflicts and climate-related weather extremes. FAO and WFP warn of food insecurity for millions of people due to higher prices of food, fuels and fertilizers.
The need for action is clear: countries must work together, break down siloes between sectors and step up efforts for humanitarian assistance and sustainable development – including through private-public partnerships to strengthen food security and food systems. This is at the heart of AFSF.
Food systems resilience cannot be the responsibility of a single ministry, nor can it stop at national borders. As members of the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation , Sierra Leone and Norway are committed to driving coordinated action and taking a ‘whole of government’ approach to transforming their food systems.
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In Sierra Leone, President Bio’s flagship Feed Salone programme aims to boost agricultural production, reduce hunger and turn agriculture into a driver of jobs and growth. It combines support for farmers’ immediate needs with longer-term investment in a more resilient and modern food system, drawing on both public and private capital. Sierra Leone has put its own fiscal weight behind that transformation, raising agriculture’s share of the national budget from 2 percent to 8 percent in two years, and have secured more than US$1 billion in partner commitments — now being converted into financed programmes. That conversion is the harder half.
Government’s job is to make investment bankable. The country is modernising core value chains rather than focusing only on farm production: integrated rice industrial clusters, cassava and livestock development programmes, and climate-resilient market infrastructure. These investments are delivering results: rice self-sufficiency has risen from 68 percent in 2023 to 73 percent in 2025, and the rice import bill has begun to fall.
But predictability alone will not move capital. Across Africa, the deeper obstacle is finance. Agriculture receives only a small share of bank lending — less than one percent in Sierra Leone — and the small and mid-sized enterprises are too large for microfinance and too small for the commercial banks. Closing that gap is the single most important step to bringing private investment in at the scale resilience demands.
Resilience also means shielding farmers from shocks they cannot control, and no one is more exposed than smallholders. Sierra Leone’s new Weather Index Insurance means a bad season need not become a lost livelihood. Norway has long run a national grain reserve that steadies supply through lean periods, and Sierra Leone is building one of its own. By making risk measurable and shareable, these instruments open the door to greater public-private partnerships.
Every country faces different challenges, but the principle of system-wide resilience remains the same. In Norway, food systems are being strengthened through a similar recognition that real transformation requires a whole-of-government approach.
Norway’s national food systems pathway links domestic food production, from farming, fisheries and aquaculture, with climate, health and environmental objectives, in accordance with Agenda 2030, to make food security, climate and environmental policies mutually reinforcing for national resilience. This model of joined-up action is demonstrated in the Government’s work across ministries, including promoting healthy diets, sustainable feed for livestock and fisheries, reducing food waste and CO2 emissions, and other actions to follow up on the SDGs.
An integrated approach is also pursued in Norway’s international development policies and official development assistance (ODA), amounting to 1% of GNI, more than 5 billion USD in total in 2026. Among priority areas in past years are global health, food security, and climate action, with Norway’s groundbreaking International Climate and Forest Initiative supporting rainforest protection and biodiversity in the Congo Basin, Amazon and elsewhere. These are landscapes where deforestation is often driven by agricultural expansion, tying forest protection directly back to food systems transformation. Partnerships with Africa are central to Norway’s foreign and development policies.
Our global common interests increasingly intersect across food security, climate, nature and economic development, but does not mean prescribing a single model for transformation. Countries have knowledge and leadership to determine their own priorities. Development partners can help mobilize the finance, expertise and investment needed to deliver.
To succeed, it is critical for national governments to create incentives and predictability for trade, investments and engagement by private sector and business companies. The Africa Food Systems Forum is an important platform for broadening our common understanding of how to generate investments in real resilience, particularly through private-public partnerships. Governments need business partners to build resilient, sustainable food systems and value chains – for soil health, irrigation, infrastructure, climate-smart technologies, “from farm to fork” – and to achieve the SDGs, including SDG2, the goal to eliminate hunger, which is not on track.
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At a time when multilateral cooperation is under strain, partnerships built around national leadership, knowledge exchange and shared interests offer a practical way to build resilience across borders. The work ahead demands that we deepen our partnerships across the board, united by common interests and a shared responsibility for the global public goods at stake in hunger and food systems
The era of announcing commitments is giving way to delivery. As two very different countries working on food systems transformation, Sierra Leone and Norway have reached the same conclusion: resilience should be financed, built and maintained, across sectors, across government, and across borders. That is the test we set ourselves – and the one we invite others to meet.
Dr Kpaka, Minister of Agriculture and Food Security for the Government of Sierra Leone, and Paul Gulleik Larsen, Special Envoy & Ambassador-at-large for International Climate and Food Security Initiatives in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway