By H.E. Ambassador Alhaji Sarjoh Bah, PhD, Permanent Representative of the African Union to the People’s Republic of China. Adapted from remarks delivered at the 8th Global Forum of Leaders for Agricultural Science and Technology (GLAST 2026), Sanya, Hainan Province, on 2 November 2026.
Food security remains one of the defining challenges of our time. Across continents, smallholder farmers, rural communities and national governments grapple with overlapping pressures: shifting climate patterns, land degradation, water scarcity, growing population demands, and persistent gaps in access to modern agricultural inputs and knowledge.
Africa holds a very large share of the world’s remaining uncultivated arable land, and most of our people still earn their living from farming. At the same time, we spend tens of billions of dollars a year on imported food. Visitors sometimes read this as a failure of the land or of the farmers. But the dynamics are more nuanced than that. The land is willing, and the farmers are hardworking; what has been uneven is access to knowledge, finance and infrastructure, and these are areas a forum like GLAST can help to change.
A sustainable, resilient future for agriculture cannot be realised by nations acting in isolation. Two aspects of the forum’s theme deserve our attention: the pivotal role of science and technology, and the role of partnerships.
Science must reach the farmer
Science and technology are the foundational engine for reshaping tomorrow’s agriculture. Modern agricultural innovation spans climate-smart crop varieties, digital farming solutions, sustainable soil management, efficient water-saving technologies, and advanced agri-food processing systems. These are not abstract laboratory achievements. They have real-world power: to lift crop yields, reduce post-harvest losses, strengthen climate resilience, protect biodiversity, and improve livelihoods for millions of farming households, especially in developing regions.
Nevertheless, technology on its own is not enough. Many promising agricultural innovations remain confined within research institutes. Too many communities in Africa and other developing regions still cannot access, afford, or adapt these breakthroughs to local ecological and socio-economic realities. Technology transfer cannot be merely about equipment handovers. It must be accompanied by capacity building, knowledge sharing, and locally tailored adaptation. Innovation succeeds only when it reaches the hands of those who feed our societies: the farmers.
The kind of cooperation that serves best
Global partnerships are the indispensable enabler that turns scientific progress into tangible agricultural impact. No country, however strong its research system, can address climate variability, food insecurity and pests that ignore borders alone. Cooperation is a practical necessity. The harder question is what kind of cooperation serves best.
In our experience, cooperation works when it is aligned with, and respects, the priorities of the region being served. Africa has clearly set out its priorities, including food security, in Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want. Through Agenda 2063 we have laid out a comprehensive roadmap for food security, and last year in Kampala, Uganda, we adopted a ten-year agricultural programme that elaborates how to improve farming and food systems for long-term food sovereignty. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the largest free trade area by number of participating countries, provides our farmers with a market of 1.4 billion consumers. The question is what role China can play in realising the goals of Agenda 2063.
China is well placed to contribute to Africa’s vision of secure and sustainable food security. In just a few decades, China has reduced rural poverty on an unprecedented scale and built one of the largest agricultural research systems anywhere. Chinese demonstration centres, technical teams and training programmes are already at work in many African countries. We would hope to see this move from demonstration to wide adoption, from technical assistance to joint research, and from separate projects to alliances that also include African universities, national research institutes and private companies.
Market access belongs to the same discussion, since better harvests mean little if the farmer cannot sell. China’s decision to grant zero-tariff treatment to products from all African countries with which it has diplomatic relations, announced at the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and in effect since May this year, is a significant step.
Equity as a central principle
Partnerships must uphold equity as a central principle. We need joint research programmes co-designed to solve local priority problems, rather than one-way imposition of external solutions. We need open exchange of scientific data, joint training for young agricultural scientists, and collaborative pilot projects that test innovations in real-field conditions. The long-standing cooperation between the African Union, through the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) exemplifies this spirit: practical, science-driven cooperation that directly serves rural transformation and food security on the African continent.
I remain convinced that the China-Africa Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Alliance (CASTIA), driven by CAAS and the African Academy of Sciences, will respond to many of the challenges affecting food security in Africa. I commit to facilitating, wherever possible, CASTIA’s activities to ensure its success.
I can also see synergy in agricultural delivery if the African Continental Free Trade Area and the Hainan Free Trade Port were operationally linked through a formal agreement to ensure the free and easy exchange of germplasm between China and Africa for scientific research and business. The AU Permanent Mission to China would be willing to facilitate such an initiative.
A shared global mission
Forums such as GLAST allow us to move beyond separate national agendas, to listen to one another, and to forge practical collaborative paths forward. Feeding our world sustainably is a shared global mission. Let us harness science, advance fair global partnerships, and jointly shape a prosperous agricultural future for all.
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