AFSA

The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) is pleased to release its 2025–2026 Annual Report, documenting a year of collective action to advance agroecology, defend farmers’ rights and strengthen community-led food systems. Covering 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026, the report marks the first year of implementation of AFSA’s 2025–2029 Strategic Framework. It brings together achievements, experiences and lessons from an alliance of 48 member organisations, showing how local knowledge and community leadership inform action from farmers’ fields to national, regional and global policy spaces.

The report highlights efforts to protect farmers’ rights to save and exchange seeds, advance agroecology in climate policy, celebrate African food cultures and strengthen local economies. Key developments include the Seed Is Life and My Food Is African campaigns, Healthy Soil Healthy Food work across six countries, and support for 222 agroecological enterprises and 21 territorial markets. Member stories bring these achievements to life: young farmers and women restoring land and water systems in Zambia, communities expanding farmer-led agroecology across West Africa, and farmers in Malawi rebuilding soil fertility and improving maize harvests through locally produced organic manure. Together, these experiences demonstrate the practical value of African-led solutions for livelihoods, resilience and food sovereignty.

Reflecting on the communities behind this work, AFSA Board Chairperson Rev. Dr. Tolbert Thomas Jallah Jr. writes: “Their experiences remind us that food sovereignty is not simply a policy aspiration; it is lived every day through the stewardship of land, seeds, biodiversity, livelihoods and human dignity.” General Coordinator Dr. Million Belay sets out the ambition guiding the alliance: “Our task is not only to respond to crisis, but to build power, alternatives and hope.”

Alongside these achievements, the report shares the challenges, institutional developments and lessons shaping AFSA’s next steps, including the need to translate policy commitments into implementation and sustain investment in community-led change. AFSA thanks its members, communities, partners, donors and allies for their commitment and invites policymakers, researchers, civil society and the wider public to explore and share the report.

Read the AFSA Annual Report 2025–2026

The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) extends its warmest congratulations to the Rural Women’s Assembly (RWA), one of its core members, on being named a 2026 Right Livelihood Laureate. The Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” honours RWA “for organising rural women across Southern Africa into a united force defending land, seed and bodily autonomy against corporate and patriarchal dispossession.”

The recognition belongs to a movement built from the ground up. Since 250 rural women founded it in Limpopo Province, South Africa, in 2009, RWA has grown into a self-organised movement of more than 178,000 small-scale farmers in eleven countries: Angola, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Through its flat, volunteer-led structure and its Agroecology and Feminist Schools, RWA advances feminist agroecology and food and seed sovereignty across the region. It has established 24 seed multiplication sites and documented hundreds of Indigenous seed varieties, protecting farmer-managed seed systems from commercialisation and strengthening communities’ resilience to climate shocks. The movement’s collective voice helped secure Zambia’s 2016 law mandating equal land allocation to women and Eswatini’s landmark 2018 Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Bill.

Dr Million Belay, General Coordinator of AFSA, said:

“Our hearts are full today. We congratulate our sisters of the Rural Women’s Assembly on this richly deserved recognition. For years, RWA has shown all of us what food sovereignty looks like when it is built by the women who grow Africa’s food, save its seeds and hold its communities together. This Award honours every woman farmer who has stood her ground for land, seed and dignity. It also sends a message to social movements across Africa: our struggles for agroecology, for justice and for control over our own food systems are seen, they matter, and they are bearing fruit. The future of African food is being sown, patiently and collectively, by rural women.”

For AFSA and its members, this Award affirms a conviction we share: food sovereignty is inseparable from women’s rights to land, seed and bodily autonomy, and lasting change grows from people organising together.

RWA’s journey, in the words of its Regional Coordinator Mercia Andrews, shows that   “no single voice moves a mountain; it is the patient, collective weight of thousands of rural women organizing together that has shifted what was once thought immovable.”

AFSA is proud to stand alongside RWA and joins the global community in celebrating this achievement. The 2026 Laureates will be honoured at the Award Presentation in Stockholm on 1 December 2026.

Application deadline: Sunday, 20 September 2026 at 5:00 p.m. EAT

The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) invites qualified consultants to apply for an assignment to synthesise country studies and a desk review on the consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) among young people in Africa.

The consultancy supports the work of AFSA’s Youth and Agroecology Working Group, which is developing a continental youth campaign promoting healthier, locally produced and agroecologically produced foods. AFSA and its partners are conducting participatory studies in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and Togo, alongside a youth-led review of relevant research, policies, regulatory frameworks and international experiences concerning UPFs.

The selected consultant will review and integrate the findings from the four country studies and the desk review into a coherent, evidence-based Continental Background Study. The assignment will identify common themes, differences and emerging patterns; integrate qualitative and quantitative evidence; and develop clear recommendations and messages to inform the continental campaign.

Key deliverables will include an inception note, evidence synthesis matrix, presentation of preliminary findings, draft and final Continental Background Study, and a campaign evidence and messaging brief. The assignment is expected to be completed within two weeks of contract signing.

Applicants should hold a postgraduate qualification in social sciences, public health, nutrition, agriculture, food systems, development studies or a related field. They should demonstrate strong experience in research synthesis, mixed-methods analysis, report writing and food systems or related issues. Knowledge of youth and food systems and experience translating research into policy advocacy or campaign messages will be particularly valuable.

How to apply

Interested consultants should submit:

• A brief technical proposal;
• A proposed work plan and timeline;
• A financial proposal in USD;
• An updated CV;
• Evidence of relevant previous assignments; and
• At least two relevant references.

Applications must be emailed to afsa@afsafrica.org by Sunday, 20 September 2026 at 5:00 p.m. EAT, with the subject line:

“Consultancy Services for the UPF Synthesis”

Requests for clarification may be submitted to afsa@afsafrica.org before 15 September 2026.

Please refer to the full Terms of Reference for complete details about the assignment, deliverables, qualifications and evaluation criteria. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

 

The Pan-African Parliament (PAP), through its Committee on Rural Economy, Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environment, in partnership with the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), invites applications from qualified individual consultants to develop the Legal and Policy Framework Paper for the Model Law on African Food Systems.

The proposed Model Law will help establish a coherent continental framework for African food systems, bringing together issues relating to agriculture, nutrition, environment, land, trade and consumer protection. It will place agroecology, food sovereignty and the rights of food producers at the centre of how food is produced, traded and consumed across Africa.

The Lead Consultant will prepare the Legal and Policy Framework Paper, an annotated outline of the proposed Model Law, and a roadmap for the subsequent drafting and consultation process. The consultant will also provide technical support to a Pan-African Parliament Committee workshop. The assignment is an individual consultancy requiring 25 consultancy days.

Applicants must have an advanced degree in law, at least ten years of relevant professional experience, and demonstrated expertise in legislative drafting, public policy and African food, agriculture, environment, land or natural-resources law.

How to apply

Submit a single PDF application pack containing:

• A technical proposal of no more than six pages;
• A CV of no more than five pages;
• Two relevant writing samples;
• A financial proposal for the 25 consultancy days; and
• Contact details for three professional referees.

Applications should be emailed to afsa@afsafrica.org by 18 September 2026 at 17:00 East Africa Time, with the subject line:

“Lead Consultant: Model Law on African Food System”

Please refer to the full Terms of Reference for the complete scope, qualifications, deliverables and application requirements. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.


Consulte le cahier des charges complet pour connaître le périmètre exact de la mission, les qualifications requises, les livrables et les conditions de candidature. Seuls les candidats présélectionnés seront contactés.

A common continental voice from farmers, pastoralists, women, youth, Indigenous Peoples, fisherfolk and faith leaders in more than 30 countries, charting the road to COP31 and COP32

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA, September 9, 2026 — African civil society organisations and movements from more than 30 countries today issued the Addis Ababa Declaration of an African Civil Society Position on Climate Action in Food Systems and Agriculture, closing a three-day Continental Convening hosted by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) in partnership with the Ethiopian Ministry of Planning and Development. Representing farmers’ and pastoralists’ organisations, women’s, children’s and youth networks, people living with special needs, faith-based organisations, Indigenous Peoples, fisherfolk, researchers and academia, alongside government and inter-governmental representatives, delegates affirmed a shared conviction: Africa’s climate future cannot be separated from its food future, and decisions about that future must be shaped by the people who produce, trade, prepare and consume food.

The Declaration names four persistent gaps that must define the road to COP31 and COP32: between ambition and implementation, between adaptation needs and available finance, between pledged and delivered climate finance, and between global rules and the daily realities of people on the front line. Smallholder farmers, delegates were clear, do not experience climate change as an “implementation gap” or a negotiating acronym, they experience crop loss, water stress, declining soil fertility, livestock stress, rising debt, hunger and falling income. The Declaration places agroecology, as a science, practice and social movement, at the centre of Africa’s own pathway to resilience and food sovereignty.

Civil society sets out six key demands for COP31 and COP32:

1. Put adaptation, agriculture and food security at the centre of implementation, treating adaptation as a political priority equal to mitigation and renewing the Sharm el-Sheikh Joint Work on Agriculture and Food Security to move from knowledge exchange to delivery.
2. Make climate finance accessible, grant-based and locally accountable, closing the gap behind the USD 300 billion annual finance goal set at COP29, with expanded direct-access windows for smallholder farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk, and women’s and youth enterprises.
3. Fund African-led agroecology and seed sovereignty, through public investment in community seed banks, soil and ecosystem restoration, water harvesting, Indigenous foods and knowledge, and local markets.
4. Support a people-centred just transition that is bottom-up and farmer-centred, protecting land and seed rights and rejecting prescriptive pathways that shift costs onto smallholder farmers, pastoralists and fisherfolk.
5. Make nutrition, health, gender and pastoralism visible in climate implementation, measuring resilience by dietary quality, health and dignity, not yields alone, with explicit attention to pastoral land tenure and rangeland protection, and to women’s access to land, finance and decision-making.
6. Build an African accountability architecture from Addis to communities, aligning national climate and development plans and budgets, and publishing regular reports and data on climate finance promised, approved, disbursed and delivered.

As a movement, African civil society commits to coordinate around a shared set of demands, connect community realities to national, continental and UNFCCC processes, create space for the meaningful participation of frontline communities, mobilise public and grant-based finance for African-led solutions, and communicate publicly on promises, finance and outcomes.

“Africa’s food systems cannot remain in the shadows of global climate action, they are central to our adaptation, livelihoods, economies, health, cultures, biodiversity, sovereignty and future,” the Declaration states. Its test for both COPs is not the number of declarations adopted, but whether a farmer can withstand the next failed rainy season, whether a pastoralist can access water and grazing without losing a livelihood, and whether a child can grow up nourished rather than stunted by drought.

Civil society calls on African governments, Parties to the UNFCCC, the COP31 and COP32 Presidencies, the African Union, the African Group of Negotiators, climate funds, development partners, research institutions and responsible private actors to work with African civil society and frontline communities to deliver a decisive shift from promises to implementation.

“Africa must not wait for its food and climate future to be designed elsewhere. Our evidence must influence decisions, our solutions must be recognised, and climate finance must reach the people and places where adaptation is already happening.”

The full text of the Addis Ababa Declaration of the African CSOs Position on Climate Action in Food Systems and Agriculture Towards COP31 and COP32 is available to download at: 

THE ADDIS ABABA DECLARATION OF AN AFRICAN CIVIL SOCIETY POSITION ON CLIMATE ACTION IN FOOD SYSTEMS AND AGRICULTURE TOWARDS COP31 AND COP32

LA DÉCLARATION D’ADDIS-ABEBA DE POSITION DE LA SOCIÉTÉ CIVILE AFRICAINE SUR L’ACTION CLIMATIQUE DANS LES SYSTÈMES ALIMENTAIRES ET L’AGRICULTURE EN VUE DES COP 31 ET COP 32

About AFSA

The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) is the largest civil society organisation network on the continent, representing major social movements working on food sovereignty, agroecology and climate justice across Africa.

 

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