Beyond production: a broader conversation on rice in Africa
What does investment actually change? Africa no longer lacks ideas about what works. The real challenge is to create the conditions to finance those ideas, deliver them, and take them to scale, by connecting proven solutions with the policies, institutions, finance, and markets that turn them into lasting impact.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (14 October 2026) - In Kigali in September, more than 5,000 delegates from over 50 countries gathered at the Africa Food Systems Forum around a deceptively simple question: what does investment actually change? The answer that resonated was clear. Africa no longer lacks ideas about what works. The real challenge is to create the conditions to finance those ideas, deliver them, and take them to scale, by connecting proven solutions with the policies, institutions, finance, and markets that turn them into lasting impact. As CGIAR put it in Kigali, impact comes when science, evidence, policy, delivery systems, and finance move together, so that innovations travel from pilots to scale.
Rice sits squarely within this broader conversation.
Rice is one of Africa's most dynamic food and economic commodities. Demand in sub-Saharan Africa is growing faster than for any other staple, and the region now accounts for about a third of all rice imported worldwide. The continent's annual rice import bill, estimated at more than US$6 billion, signals both the scale of the market and the opportunity for African farmers and businesses to capture more of it through stronger domestic and regional rice value chains.