Farm4Trade Namibia is among the selected participants to the “Dialogue for Action and Brokerage in West Africa” promoted by LEAP4FNSSA -Long term Europe and Africa Research and Innovation Partnership for Food Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture.
The event, which will take place online in october, aims at strengthening the partnership between Africa and Europe on the Food Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture program, creating a bridge between small businesses and existing innovation hubs.
Farm4Trade represents the ideal candidate to answer LEAP4FNSSA’s call, since we provide tools that allow all the food supply chain's stakeholders to control every aspect of the production from farm to fork and our projects can be inscribed in the following areas:
- Innovation and digitalization: the development of innovative solutions to help farmers make more informed decisions and improve agricultural and zootechnical production and the overall food system sustainability, “from farm to fork” in adherence to the recent Farm to Fork Strategy from the EU, key to the “European Green Deal”:
- Short value chain: the development of innovative solutions to support circular agricultural systems and strengthen the link between local food productions and internal market demand and consumptions.
- Ecological transition of food systems: the development of innovative ideas that link the health of the agrosystem, animal and human to the food production and consumption.
All of Farm4Trade products and technological solutions address these problems in the food system, along with many others, on various levels and regarding different stakeholders of the agricultural and zootechnical supply chain.
The nature of our technological solutions adverses the abandonment of rural areas and gives to the younger generations of farmers new and modern tools to manage their agricultural and livestock ventures.
Our feed related module, soon to be launched in Namibia, helps mitigate scarcity of feed by proposing best value based rations that include safe bush feed proportions, in order to improve the quality of animal feed and related animal products quality, and provide farmers with practical knowledge and tools to contain feed costs.
Our flagship app for Farm Management supports easy and digital data registration where there is lack of infrastructure, by enabling the access to innovative technology via personal connected devices. The mass data collected in our apps has rich potential for epidemiology studies which can monitor and find insights to help reduce and prevent high prevalence of diseases and parasites and inadequate veterinary coverage. These data can be a critical resource for central governments, institutions and industry associations where there is lack of market information.
Farm4Trade has a consolidated commercial presence in Africa, especially in the SADC area - Southern Africa Developing Countries - Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. Currently about 25% of our users are from all african regions but for the northern and central ones.
In 2019, we participated at the Windhoek Industrial and Agricultural Show as an exhibitor, and had strong engagement with participants. In 2019 we worked rigorously on a tender for by De-Bushing Advisory Service Namibia, funded by GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), with the goal of strengthening our international collaborations and push the adoption of innovative tools in the african countries.
Our participation to the LEAP4FNSSA workshop represents an occasion to meet fellow industry innovators and engage with them a conversation on topics such as the resilience of the food systems in Sub Saharan Africa facing the current Coronavirus pandemic, which severely affects productive chains and requires prompt action aimed at supporting and reinforcing internal markets and short value chains.
It is also crucial to demand the stakeholders’ attention and action in order to address and solve pre-existing threats, such as climate change that pose serious risks for the food system globally, deterioration and over exploitation of natural resources, which represent a challenge for the development of sustainable models and to understand the current change in ecological dynamics.
