Large food innovation grant sets stage for AU-EU talks

An Africa-Europe research consortium has secured nearly €6 million (US$7 million) in European Union (EU) funding to help close the gap between agricultural research and the innovations needed to strengthen food security.

The four-year project, AKIS4FNSSA, will investigate how universities, research institutes, farmers, agricultural advisers, businesses and policymakers can work together more effectively to turn knowledge into practical solutions for sustainable agriculture and food-systems transformation.

The award comes as African and European ministers prepare to meet in Addis Ababa on 27 October to review their shared research and innovation agenda, which was developed in the wake of their inaugural meeting six years ago.

This will be followed by a meeting on 28 October to discuss the next phase of cooperation on food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture.

Hunger crisis

The challenge is pressing. According to the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), approximately 309 million Africans – one in five – experienced hunger in 2025, while nearly 57% of the continent’s population faced moderate or severe food insecurity.

Marking World Food Day on 16 October, FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu emphasised the importance of ensuring that scientific advances reach those who need them.

“The gap between what science can do and what reaches farmers remains too wide,” he said at FAO headquarters in Rome.

The most effective solutions, he added, are developed with the people who use them – including farmers, fishers, pastoralists and rural communities – and adapted to local circumstances. This is the challenge AKIS4FNSSA seeks to address.

Agricultural knowledge and innovation systems (AKIS) encompass the networks and processes through which agricultural knowledge is generated, shared and applied. Yet these systems are often fragmented, with unequal access to knowledge, resources and decision-making.

The project aims to understand how those systems function, identify gaps in institutional capabilities and test approaches that bring different actors together around shared objectives in promoting food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture (FNSSA).

Seeds of cooperation

The grant “builds on several years of collaborative research, capacity development and partnership, providing an opportunity to take that work further, connecting African and European institutions around a shared research and innovation agenda,” Professor Nolwazi Mkhwanazi, the director of the University of Pretoria’s (UP) Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship (CAS), told University World News.

The African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Food Systems (CoE-SFS) was established in 2018 through collaboration involving UP and the universities of Ghana and Nairobi, as well as the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN).

An intercontinental dimension was added in June 2023 with the establishment of the Africa–Europe Cluster of Research Excellence in Sustainable Food Systems (CoRE-SFS), under an initiative jointly led by ARUA and The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities.

The UP-based ARUA CoE-SFS is a co-host of the cluster. The university identifies the AKIS4FNSSA grant as a significant achievement of CoRE-SFS, which is co-led by Professor Frans Swanepoel. The cluster pursues a 10-year programme spanning research, education and capacity development, societal impact and networking.

“Securing competitive international funding is important, but the greater opportunity is to strengthen African research capacity and institutions,” he told University World News.

“We want equitable and sustainable partnerships in which African researchers help shape priorities and develop solutions, with benefits extending well beyond individual projects.”

Cultivating Africa-Europe partnerships

The CORDIS database of the European Commission (EC) records EU funding of €5.998 million for AKIS4FNSSA. The grant agreement was signed in May, and the project runs from September 2026 to August 2030.

The funding comes from Horizon Europe, the EU’s €93.5 billion (US$105 billion) research and innovation programme for 2021–27.

Its Africa Initiatives are successive packages of calls intended to encourage or require African participation in collaborative research responding to priorities identified by the African Union (AU) and EU.

These priorities are captured in the AU–EU Innovation Agenda (2023–33), adopted by the two commissions in July 2023. The agenda seeks to translate joint research into products, services, businesses, jobs and other tangible benefits in Africa and Europe. Its priorities include public health, the green transition, innovation and technology, and capacities for science.

Africa Initiative II, in Horizon Europe’s 2023–24 work programme, had a budget of roughly €300 million. Among the initiatives it funded was CEA-FIRST, a €3.3 million project coordinated by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) in Ghana.

CEA-FIRST supports the AU–EU International Research Consortium on FNSSA (IRC-FNSSA), a platform intended to coordinate research programmes, institutions and innovation networks across the two continents.

According to Nienke Beintema, project manager for food systems governance and resilience at Wageningen University & Research (WUR) in the Netherlands, the AKIS4FNSSA consortium initially took shape during discussions within CEA-FIRST.

AKIS4FNSSA subsequently secured funding under Africa Initiative III, in the 2025 work programme of Horizon Europe, which earmarked more than €500 million for Africa–Europe research cooperation.

The EU has since launched Africa Initiative IV, its largest yet, with more than €600 million allocated to research and innovation calls under the 2026–27 work programme, as reported by University World News earlier this year.

From lab to field

AKIS4FNSSA is coordinated by Stichting Wageningen Research (WR), the not-for-profit research foundation that together with Wageningen University forms WUR.

WR “led the development of the proposal with strong participation of many of the consortium partners,” Beintema said.

The consortium comprises 18 organisations from 13 African and European countries.

The African partners include the universities of Pretoria and the Free State in South Africa, the University of Ghana and the University of Parakou in Benin.

They are joined by the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) of South Africa, FARA, as well as the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) and the African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS), both based in Uganda.

Other African partners include research and development organisations in Rwanda, Cameroon, Egypt and South Africa.
European partners include WUR, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, the universities of Eastern Finland and Hohenheim, France’s agricultural research organisation CIRAD, and CIHEAM Bari in Italy.

Comparative studies will take place in Egypt, Tunisia, Benin, Ghana, Cameroon, Rwanda, Madagascar and South Africa, representing different agricultural, environmental and institutional settings.

Weaving connections

A central proposed outcome of AKIS4FNSSA is the AU–EU AKIS Nexus, envisioned as an inclusive platform to connect existing research and innovation networks, support knowledge exchange and strengthen collaboration between science, policy and practice.

Beintema said the Nexus is intended to facilitate cross-country learning and long-term cooperation while supporting IRC-FNSSA under the broader AU–EU FNSSA partnership.

Rather than creating another isolated initiative, the project aims to develop connections and institutional arrangements that can endure beyond individual research grants.

Recipes for success

UP leads a work package examining the capabilities that organisations and innovation networks need to adapt to changing circumstances and support agricultural transformation. It will also help identify ways to embed those capabilities in institutions and contribute to monitoring and learning across the consortium.

This work draws partly on the Supporting Agricultural Research and Innovation (SARI) initiative, directed by the University of Mpumalanga, which has piloted locally driven approaches to agricultural innovation.

Tim Fry, lead researcher for the implementation of SARI since 2022, coordinated three multi-stakeholder rural innovation hubs where participants identified local food-system challenges and developed collaborative responses.

“Our experience has shown the importance of bringing different stakeholders together to understand food-system challenges and develop solutions collaboratively. AKIS4FNSSA gives us an opportunity to build on that work and examine what institutions need to sustain these approaches and extend their benefits,” he told University World News.

The season ahead

The AKIS4FNSSA grant provides a practical example of the cooperation that will be under discussion at the Second AU–EU Research and Innovation Ministerial Meeting in Ethiopia on 27 October.

Delegations are expected to review progress under the AU–EU Innovation Agenda and endorse an updated FNSSA research and innovation roadmap for 2027–36 as the current 2016–26 roadmap draws to a close.

On 28 October, CEA-FIRST and the EU-funded AfriFOODlinks project will host a side event focusing on future FNSSA priorities and the role of IRC-FNSSA in connecting research, policy and implementation. Urban food systems will feature prominently, reflecting the challenges and opportunities arising from Africa’s rapid urbanisation.

Attention will then turn to Italy, where Mediterranean Innovation Agrifood Week is scheduled to take place at CIHEAM Bari in Valenzano from 23 to 27 November. This intergovernmental institute specialises in agricultural research, education and development cooperation.

As part of the programme, the AU–EU–Mediterranean Innovation Fair on 25 November will bring researchers, entrepreneurs, investors and policymakers together under the theme “Turning results into market successes”.

For AKIS4FNSSA, the test will be whether the Horizon Europe funding it secured produces more than new knowledge. It must also deliver stronger institutions, better-connected innovation networks and practical benefits that last beyond the grant.