Yearly Archives: 2021

The FOOD WE WANT: AFSA endorses The Global Call to Action Against UPOV

    On 8 December 2021, The Alliance for the Food Sovereignty in Africa met in Nairobi, Kenya. As representatives from 55 African countries, and over 30 million smallholder farmers, pastoralists, hunter/gatherers, indigenous peoples, faith-based institutions, women and youth networks, consumer networks and civil society from across Africa, we join in the global call of action against the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), and thoroughly reject its imposition on our continent’s food systems. UPOV is at the heart of […]

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POLICY BRIEF: Climate disruption, food crises and biodiversity collapse: Time to take Zambian Farmers’ Rights seriously

  Zambia faces severe challenges around malnutrition and hunger, biodiversity loss, soil erosion and degradation, and embedded rural poverty.i/ii/iii These  challenges are exacerbated by the already felt impacts of climate change – more severe extreme weather events such as droughts, rising temperatures and shifting and shorter rainy seasons. As more than half the population is reliant on agricultural activities for sustenance and cash incomes,iv Zambia’s agriculture sector, founded on the work of its smallholder farmers, makes the most logical and critical intervention point to address […]

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