Expert Panels 2027 · 14:00–15:30

EXPERT PANEL 9

From Crisis to Resilience: Helping Food Businesses Keep Safe and Nutritious Food on the Market

Organisers: Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) · Welthungerhilfe (WHH)

Language: English

Food-system resilience depends on sustaining agricultural production through shocks, but also on the enterprises that process, store, transport and make food available to consumers. Food harvests reach consumers only if these businesses can keep operating. In fragile and crisis-affected settings, repeated or overlapping shocks can disrupt inputs, energy, infrastructure, logistics, working capital and quality assurance before enterprises have recovered from the previous crisis. This can affect not only food availability, but also the cost, affordability and diversity of healthy diets.

Drawing on practical experiences from fragile and crisis-affected settings, the panel will explore what agri-food SMEs need to remain operational and viable, and adapt during shocks. It will examine critical inputs and infrastructure, food safety and quality assurance, innovation and technology, enabling policy environments, business adaptations and access to finance. Cases, including from food processing, will illustrate how disruptions affect different enterprises and food value chains, and ultimately the availability and affordability of nutritious foods.

Together with the audience, businesses, policymakers, development partners and investors will identify what can be put in place before the next shock to strengthen agri-food SME resilience and sustain food supply to communities, including in particularly vulnerable settings.

EXPERT PANEL 10

Deeper Markets, Resilient Systems: The AfCFTA and Africa’s Food and Agricultural Trade Future

Organisers: German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) · AKADEMIYA2063 · OECD Sahel and West Africa Club · University of Bonn · Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)

Language: English

Reliable, diverse and rule-based trade is key to preventing supply shortages in import-dependent regions. Many African countries rely heavily on food imports from outside the continent, leaving them exposed to international shocks such as export restrictions and disrupted supply chains. Official statistics suggest that intra-African food trade is low, yet informal cross-border trade already links surplus and deficit areas, stabilising food supply and increasing diversification. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is the continent’s largest effort to diversify Africa’s trade structure and can reduce reliance on global markets. It promises deeper regional markets that buffer shocks, diversify supply sources and create new value-chain opportunities, complementing a strengthened multilateral trading system under the WTO. The session asks how far regional trade already stabilises food markets in Africa, where the bottlenecks to deeper integration lie, and what the AfCFTA must deliver for producers and consumers. As Germany realigns its trade and development partnerships in a more volatile geopolitical environment, supporting rule-based, diversified African regional markets under the AfCFTA strengthens food security in partner countries and reduces crisis-driven demand for humanitarian aid, while opening new value-chain opportunities for European and African businesses.