What are resilient African seed systems and how can they be achieved?

Seed systems are a key area of investment in African agricultural development, as supported by the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Platform. Improved crop varieties are seen as mechanism for increasing agricultural production, building resilience to environmental and climatic shocks and stresses, improving nutritional outcomes, and creating new commodity market opportunities. However, they are also very complex. They are comprised of a diverse range of actors, processes, regulations, and flows of information, knowledge and resources. They are systems that cross scales, public-private domains, and formal-informal systems of governance. In a context of multiple priorities and drivers of change, this dialogue will ask:

‘What are resilient African seed systems and how can they be achieved?’

This broader question encapsulates a number of sub-questions:

• What do seed systems need to be resilient to?
• What are the characteristics of a resilient seed system?
• How should seed systems be governed?
• Who should have a role, and what investment, information and resources do they need?

This dialogue is being convened by GCRF-AFRICAP, a programme of work funded by the UK government, and being led by the University of Leeds and the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN). The programme aims to establish academic partnerships between UK and African research and policy institutions and develop capacity across these partnerships in the field of climate smart agriculture and food systems. It is driven by an aim to build capacity for, co-develop and demonstrate, nationally owned SDG-compliant agri-food development pathways that can be productive, sustainable and climate-smart.