Launching the African Vegetable Biodiversity Rescue Plan

African vegetables are more adapted to climate change compared to staple crops, as recent award-winning research on ‘opportunity crops’ has shown – but an earlier study also found that vegetable biodiversity in Africa is poorly conserved. Priority actions for safeguarding these priceless genetic resources for food and agriculture were proposed, developed through discussions with experts from the continent, resulting in a comprehensive 10-year ‘rescue plan.’

The African Vegetable Biodiversity Rescue Plan will be formally launched on Monday 2 September 2024 during a special side event, ‘Harnessing Africa’s Vegetable Heritage’, at the start of the Africa Food Systems Forum (2-6 September), in Kigali, Rwanda.

This rescue plan will address hunger, malnutrition, poverty and climate change through a holistic approach to rescue, conserve and use African vegetable biodiversity, and to simultaneously address supply, demand, and policy challenges. It is aligned with global, continental and national policies and initiatives. Implementation will result in the genetic diversity of selected vegetables and their wild relatives being rescued, conserved, and actively used by farmers, breeders and researchers across sub-Saharan Africa. This will lead to an increase in the supply of nutrition-dense foods, especially for children through school feeding programs and increased homestead production.

Increasing vegetable production and consumption will contribute significantly to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals of zero hunger, no poverty, and climate action. Of that there is no doubt, if this is integrated into food systems and associated policies. And to ensure this much-needed transition happens in Africa requires urgent actions, to rescue, conserve and use vegetable biodiversity. Due to the decline in populations of local varieties and crop wild relatives because of rapid land use changes and climate change, among other factors, there are increasing risks that potentially valuable genetic diversity may be lost, forever, especially in identified ‘vegetable biodiversity hotspots.’

The development of this Rescue Plan was led by the World Vegetable Center through consultation with experts from regional plant genetic resources networks of the Southern Africa Development Community, West and Central Africa, and the Plant Genetic Resources Management Working Group of the African Union’s African Seed and Biotechnology Program. The resulting version was validated by representatives from 16 African countries at a workshop in Eswatini in December 2023, and after revision, it was endorsed by the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa in April 2024. This African Rescue Plan is part of the Global Rescue Plan concept presented at the UN Food System Summit in 2021.

Development of the African Vegetable Biodiversity Rescue Plan was supported by the Taiwan Africa Vegetable Initiative (TAVI), implemented by the World Vegetable Center and national partners, funded by the Government of the Republic of China (Taiwan). It is part of the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS) initiative.