The Africa Food Systems Forum – AGRF is the world’s premier forum for African agriculture, bringing together stakeholders in the agricultural landscape to take practical actions and share lessons that will move African agriculture forward. The Forum is a multi-sector platform comprising of 26 partners leading in African agriculture all focused on putting farmers at the centre of the continent’s growing economies.  Initially established as the “African Green Revolution Conference” in 2006, AGRF has continued to evolve over the years. Yara International established the African Green Revolution Conference in Oslo as an annual event focused on fostering public-private partnerships and mobilizing investments into African agriculture from 2006-2009. In 2010, with the championing of Kofi Annan, the location of the conference was moved to Africa and responsibility for the Secretariat shifted from Yara to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). The change represented a move towards broader engagement of African stakeholders in the African agricultural transformation agenda. Since 2010, AGRF has been held annually (except for 2011) in different regions of Africa with evolving themes and has annually brought together Heads of State, Ministers, business leaders, development partners, thought leaders, farmers, youth, and other stakeholders to focus on the actions and policies needed to move the continental agenda forward. AGRF has over time incorporated new elements, including a greater focus on food systems and integrated approaches, government engagement, reporting and accountability, and private sector mobilization. The Forum re-focusses its work more on inclusive healthier, more inclusive, sustainable, and equitable food systems that have the power to catalyze the SDGs achievement by 2030 in Africa. Since 2022, AGRF has been rebranded to Africa Food System Forum (AFSF) to reflect the partnership ambition on food system transformation.

At the highest strategic level, the Forum is the premier platform for supporting the continental agricultural agenda, and it will measure progress in alignment with the African Union’s leadership by reviewing data of the CAADP Biennial Review. The Forum will review Biennial Review indicators and data to understand which countries and regions and which sub-sectors of the agricultural system are improving over time and which need more focus, and the AGRF’s programmatic focus and platforms will structure their content to respond and continue to drive progress most helpfully.

AGRF’s mission is to inform influence and catalyze has focused on six strategic objectives:

Agenda Setting – AGRF serves as a platform for identifying, defining, and driving national-, regional, and continental-level priorities to accelerate progress by a broad cross-section of stakeholders through a shared vision and coordination.

Evidence-based Policy Reform – AGRF advocates and promotes evidence-based policy reforms to unlock the growth potential across the continent through agricultural transformation.

Investment Facilitation & Finance – AGRF builds and advances the pipeline of agri-investment opportunities across the continent to unlock new private sector investments at all levels – small, medium, and large.

Knowledge Sharing & Learning – AGRF shares strategies, approaches, tools, and insights about what works and what does not work to inform prioritization, replication, and scaling where appropriate.

Partnership Development & Coordination – AGRF facilitates efforts to forge and advance working relationships across an array of AGRF stakeholders to best achieve all other objectives and ensure that the community is best driving a coherent vision with effective and efficient use of resources.

Leadership cultivation – AGRF works with partners to identify, support, and cultivate the next generation of leaders for agricultural transformation at various levels.

Accountability – AGRF works with partners to track and share progress and results of political, policy, and financing commitments made by partners over the years.

The consultancy

Effective monitoring and evaluation are critical to track the Forum `s progress towards reaching its objectives as well as documenting results, lessons learned and emerging best practices to guide future activities and help craft a compelling narrative on development impact.  Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist plays an important role in helping develop accountability tools to funding agencies and stakeholders.

The Africa Food Systems Forum secretariat would like to engage a monitoring and evaluation specialist in helping review its accountability framework and tools under its newly approved strategic plan as well as providing qualitative and quantitative data to guide decisions, the rollout and implementation of the framework and strategic plan 2023-2027  performance evaluation.