By Chemtai Kirui
DAKAR, Sep 15 2025 – Winnie Wambui leans forward on the panel stage, microphone in hand, scanning the room until she spots a raised hand.

Everyone in the room wears headphones, each voice isolated so that discussions don’t clash with sessions in adjacent halls. A question cuts through: how did a student science project become a commercial business?

At 24, Wambui, a Kenyan agripreneur, runs Harcourt Agri-Eco Farm, which recycles organic waste into animal feed using black soldier flies.

“Back then, I didn’t know it would become a farm or a business,” she said to a room of agripreneurs, researchers, and investors, describing her first experiments in 2022 as an energy engineering student at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT).

Today, her eight-person team processes around 30 tonnes of waste each month and monitors the carbon emissions avoided.

The enterprise now generates at least USD 1,000 in monthly revenue, a modest but steady profit by Kenyan standards.

Inside the calm Knowledge Hub, on a panel organized by the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe), Wambui tells her story to a dozen listeners in an intimate, almost subdued setting. But just outside, at the leafy Centre International de Conference’s Abdou Diouf (CICAD) in Dakar, Senegal, the atmosphere is charged.

Presidents, cabinet ministers, development banks, and agribusiness executives pace the halls at the annual Africa Food Systems Forum (AFSF) 2025, the continent’s flagship platform for agricultural policy and investment.

This year, the forum positioned youth at the center of Africa’s food security agenda.

Wambui is part of a new generation of innovative agripreneurs that governments and financiers promise to support.

For the first time, youth agripreneurs joined heads of state on the Forum’s opening stage, a symbolic gesture of recognition in a region where nearly 400 million people are under 35.

“Our median age is just 19. And by 2050, one in three young people in the world will be African,” said Claver Gatete, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

He said that if given land, finance, technology and markets, the youths can feed not only Africa but also the world.

However, turning such vision into reality is where the continent struggles.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) often says that Africa holds roughly 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, yet poor infrastructure, limited financing, and climate shocks keep much of it idle.

With the continent collectively importing approximately USD50 billion worth of food annually, according to the African Export–Import Bank (Afreximbank), the stakes are high.

At the national level, countries like Kenya continue to face hunger crises at emergency levels.

At the start of the year, the World Food Programme estimated that around two million people were experiencing acute hunger—a recurring crisis in a country with relatively better infrastructure and higher investment flows than many of its East African neighbors.

Experts say that despite localized crises, structural issues in African agriculture worsen food insecurity across the continent.

“We have relied on grants and aid to keep agriculture afloat, and this has made the agriculture sector stuck in a risk perception trap,” said Adesuwa Ifedi, Vice President of Africa Programs at Heifer International.

Ifedi said that commercial banks and investors avoid the sector, leaving grants to fill the gap. But grant dependence can undermine ventures in the eyes of private financiers.

“Grants should leverage commercial capital so the ecosystem can thrive,” Ifedi said.

This year’s Forum coincided with the recent African Union’s rollout of its Kampala Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Strategy & Action Plan (2026–2035), or CAADP 3.0.

The new 10-year plan aims to mobilize USD 100 billion in investment, raise farm output by 45 percent, cut post-harvest losses in half, triple intra-African agrifood trade by 2035, and place youth inclusion at the core of Africa’s food future under the AU’s Agenda 2063.

In Dakar, over 30 agriculture ministers gathered under the chairmanship of former Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn Boshem, pledging to move beyond policy drafting toward delivering tangible results for agribusiness investment.

Their top priority, they said, was to shrink Africa’s food import bill by strengthening regional value chains.

Dr. Janet Edeme, head of the Rural Economy Division at the African Union Commission, told IPS that the Forum provides mechanisms to operationalize CAADP 3.0, aiming to empower at least 30 percent of youth in the agri-food sector while closing a USD 65–70 billion annual financing gap for agricultural small and medium-sized enterprises (agri-SMEs).

She said AFSF offers a rare opportunity for youthful agripreneurs to showcase bankable projects, access mentorship, and meet investors who would otherwise be out of reach.

“There are dedicated spaces—deal rooms, youth innovation competitions, investment roundtables—where these innovators can connect with governments, development finance institutions, and private investors,” said Edeme.

Organizers pointed to new spaces for youth to meet investors, but agripreneurs like Wambui said those opportunities felt distant.

She had never heard of the AU’s new flagship plan.

“I’m only hearing about that from you. If it’s meant to guide Africa’s food future, why aren’t there clear materials or programs I can see and use?” Wambui said. “Otherwise, we leave without knowing what strategies exist to support our work.”

By day two of the six-day forum, she had found her way into the deal room, the flagship space to connect entrepreneurs with investors, but instead of streamlined matchmaking, she found confusion.

“We are looking for the investors, and they’re looking for us—yet we don’t meet. Deals still depend on connections. That’s why I came to Dakar.”

Wambui, who co-founded Harcourt Agri-Eco Farm with two other partners, said the business has grown enough to cover wages, taxes, and debt repayments. Banks now extend her loans.

But that access to financing remains an exception in a system stacked against most, said Dr. Eklou Attiogbevi-Somado, the African Development Bank’s Regional Manager for Agriculture and Agro-Industry in West Africa.

He said that AfDB data shows commercial banks in Africa channel just 3–4 percent of their lending into agriculture.

Dr. David Amudavi, CEO of Biovision Africa Trust, said this capital drought is a huge concern in a sector that drives most livelihoods on the continent.

Amudavi, whose non-profit organization promotes ecological agriculture, said that the squeeze leaves farmers, and especially young agripreneurs, struggling to access credit for starting or scaling their agribusinesses, even though nearly 60 percent of Africa’s unemployed are under 25.

“Without finance, many youth-led ventures stay stuck at micro-scale or collapse,” Amudavi said.

Not far from the Youth Dome, at the deal room, Tanzanian agripreneur Nelson Joseph Kisanga, the co-founder of Get Aroma Spices, is also navigating the same maze.

Seven years ago, he left a banking career to try poultry farming, losing almost everything in his first three years.

Kisanga regrouped, merged his venture with that of his wife, Deborah, also a young agripreneur, and built Get Aroma Spices, now working with more than 50,000 farmers across southern Tanzania.

“Agriculture back home is seen as not for young people,” he said. “Even now, scaling means loans at high interest rates. There’s no other way.”

The family-run company exports turmeric, ginger, cardamom, and avocado oil while operating a youth- and women-led agro-processing hub through a public-private partnership.

His presence at the AFSF forum has already borne fruit.

“My intention coming here was to break into the West African market, and I’m happy to say I have clinched a supply deal in Ghana. All that’s left is for the lawyers to finalize the contract.” Kisanga said, before moving to the Youth Dome, a separate pavilion for young participants.

Inside, some groups chatted, others played basketball and table tennis, while others listened as young agri-food innovators pitched their ideas to a panel of investors.

Despite the fanfare, the forum ended without revealing how much capital reached youth-led ventures.

The most visible funding for youth at the summit came via the GoGettaz Agripreneur Prize, a pan-African initiative under the Generation Africa movement. The prize awarded USD 50,000 each to Egypt’s Naglaa Mohammad, who turns agricultural waste into natural products, and Uganda’s Samuel Muyita, who uses nanotechnology to reduce post-harvest fruit and vegetable losses.

An additional USD 60,000 impact award brought total prizes to roughly USD 160,000.

Other announcements included a USD 6.7 million trade programme from the United Kingdom (UK), the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), and the African Union (AU).

Senegal also launched a USD 22.5 million pilot for Community Agricultural Cooperatives, with financing linked to the African Food Systems Resilience Fund.

Yet there was no breakdown showing how much, if any, flowed to youth-led ventures.

The opacity mirrors past patterns.

Public summaries from the 2023 deal room reported only USD 3.5 million in closed investments, with no traceable flows to youth-led enterprises.

With AFSF positioned as Africa’s premier delivery platform, observers measured the announcements against CAADP 3.0’s USD 100 billion mobilization target, saying the gap is stark.

“We have seen this pattern before: big pledges at the summit, but little clarity or follow-up on how much actually reaches youth and smallholder farmers—the backbone of African food production,” said Famara Diédhiou, a Senegal-based food systems program manager with a regional civil society network.

“Without such accountability and inclusion of all stakeholders, these forums risk becoming mere showcases rather than platforms that deliver,” he said.

For now, even with the youth-first theme, AFSF still leaves young founders stuck in the same cycle of chasing visibility, hustling for contacts, and stitching together their own contracts.

As Wambui found, Kisanga, who has attended three previous Forums, said that in AFSF access is everything: you need to know in advance who to meet and be in the right room at the right moment.

“All visibility is currency,” said Kisanga. “That’s how you survive.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?’http’:’https’;if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+’://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js’;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, ‘script’, ‘twitter-wjs’);  

IPS UN Bureau, IPS UN Bureau Report, Senegal,

By Sania Farooqui
BENGALURU, India, Sep 15 2025 – Wars and oppression leave behind not just rubble and graves. They leave behind invisible wounds, profound trauma carried by survivors. And most often, women carry the largest burden. They are targeted not only because of their gender, but because surviving and leading threaten structures based on patriarchy and domination.

Mozn Hassan

In an interview with IPS Inter Press News, Egyptian feminist, peace builder and founder of Nazra for Feminist Studies, Mozn Hassan speaks about a question she has spent decades grappling with, why are women always attacked in times of conflict? Her response is sober, because women hold the potential to rebuild life.

“Violence against women is never accidental,” Hassan explains. “It is systematic. It’s about control, silencing, and making sure women do not have the tools to stand up, to resist, to create alternative futures.”

In this report by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the percentage of women killed in armed conflict doubled in 2024, accounting for 40 percent of all civilian casualties. “Over 600 million women and girls live in conflict-affected areas, a 50 percent increase since 2017.” The report points out that nearly every person exposed to a humanitarian crisis suffers from psychological distress, and 1 in 5 people go on to develop long term mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. “Only 2 percent get the care they need”.

The matter of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) has been brought up during the previous two reviews of the UN peacebuilding architecture (2020 and 2024) mentioned in this report of the International Peace Institute, “a peaceful society cannot exist if psychological impacts of war (such as grief, depression, stress and trauma) are left unaddressed in individuals, families and communities.”

Hassan has been a pioneer in the application of narrative exposure therapy (NET) among women in refugee camps and war zones. In contrast to other therapy models that concentrate on one-on-one psychological treatment, through NET she pushes for collective healing ans solidarity.

“Narrative exposure therapy is one of the tools of community psychology. It puts collective trauma-informed therapy higher than individual approaches,” she explains. “Being within collective spaces brings sharing of experiences, solidarities, and makes the community itself resilient. They can go through this afterward by themselves, they don’t need another, more educated person in a power dynamic over them.”

The approach, according to Mozn, has shown to be successful in dealing with Syrian, Palestinian, and Lebanese women in refugee camps in Lebanon and Turkey. Through five- or six-day workshops, participants narrate and re-narrate their stories, building strength on each other while creating knowledge and data on the realities of war.

Hassan remembers how women in camps, frequently from various ethnic or religious minorities, drew strength not just from sharing their own experiences but from hearing others. In this way, they developed resilience where there should have been none. “But when it’s collective, people are not left alone with their pain. They gain tools, they gain solidarity, and they gain resilience.”

Hassan points out that trauma is not a monolithic experience: “Studies show that only 20–25% of people who face trauma develop PTSD. One of the misconceptions has been that everyone who experiences trauma must have PTSD, it’s not true. Collective approaches make interventions more applicable and save resources, which are always limited for women.”

Above all, NET has given strength and mechanisms to these women to move forward. “Trauma doesn’t happen overnight, it’s an accumulation. Healing is the same. It’s not about saying: I was sick, and now I’m healed. Healing is a process. When you are triggered, you shouldn’t go back to the first point. You can have your own tools to say: I don’t want to be this version of myself while I was facing trauma,” she reflects.

For Hassan, one of the key questions of feminist peacebuilding is why women are so typically assaulted in war, revolution, and even in so-called peacetimes.

“We must stop thinking about peacebuilding only in the traditional way, only when there is open war,” she argues. “Patriarchy, militarization, securitization, and societal violence are all forms of violence that normalize abuse every day. Stability is not the same as peace.”

She points to Egypt as an example. While the country has not witnessed a civil war like Syria or Sudan, it does have systemic gender-based violence: “Egypt has more than 100 million people, half of them women. Official statistics say domestic violence is more than 60%, sexual harassment more than 98%. Femicide is rising. This is the production of collective trauma and acceptance of violence.”

The 2011 revolution, she remembers, brought these dynamics into sharp focus: “What we saw in Tahrir Square, the gang rapes, the mass assaults, was the production of societal violence. Years of harassment and normalization led to an explosion of gender-based violence that was then denied.”

Hassan’s warning is stark: the absence of bombs does not mean peace. “As long as you are not bombed by another country, people say you don’t need peace because you live in peace. But the absence of war is not peace.”

Healing, for Hassan, cannot be separated from politics and accountability. She rejects the idea that healing means forgetting.

“Forgiveness or letting go needs a process. Many people cannot sit at the same table with those who hurt them personally. But maybe it’s not our generation who will forgive. Maybe we can at least leave to others a better daily life than we lived,” she says.

Accountability, she argues, is a requirement for stability. “You couldn’t reach stability while people are thinking only about revenge. Collective healing in Egypt is important, but it also needs accountability, acceptance, and structural change.”

She also criticizes the tendency to depoliticize feminist movements: “Our definition of politics is not only about being in parliament. It is about feminist politics as tools for change everywhere. Too often feminists were pushed to say ‘we are not political.’ That sidelined many women who were engaging directly in politics.”

In spite of repression and trauma, Hassan says that women remain incredibly resilient. What they need most is recognition and tangible support to rebuild their lives and societies.

“The amazing tools of women on resilience gives me hope. I saw it so clearly with Syrian women, leaving everything, rebuilding societies, changing everywhere they go. Their accumulation of resilience is what gives me hope,” she says.

However, Mozn is wary of the narrative that glorifies women’s strength without addressing its costs. “We shouldn’t have to be strong all the time. We should be free, and lead lives where we can just be happy without strength and grit. But unfortunately, the times we live in demand resilience.”

Mozn Hassan’s words make us question what peace actually is. It is not merely ceasefires or agreements, but a challenge to deal with patriarchy, violence, and trauma at its core. Healing is political, accountability matters, and rebuilding with women is imperative. As she says: “Maybe it’s not our generation who will see forgiveness, but we can try to leave to others a better daily life than we lived.”

Her vision is both sobering and optimistic: peace will not be arriving tomorrow, but as long as women keep building resilience and insisting upon self-respect, the way to it is not yet closed.

Sania Farooqui is an independent journalist, host of The Peace Brief, a platform dedicated to amplifying women’s voices in peacebuilding and human rights. Sania has previously worked with CNN, Al Jazeera and TIME.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?’http’:’https’;if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+’://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js’;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, ‘script’, ‘twitter-wjs’);