The real test of resilience: Why collaboration, not policy, will shape Africa’s Grain Future
Africa’s food systems are under pressure but remain well-positioned for growth. The continent holds about 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land and has the workforce and technical capacity to feed itself and supply regional markets. However, grain shortages and price volatility continue to persist. The constraint is not ambition or policy intent; it is the lack of coordination across production, trade, and investment systems.
That reality was underscored recently through the Zanzibar Declaration on Resilient Grain Markets in Africa, adopted at the 11th African Grain Trade Summit. The declaration’s message was clear: no single actor, government, financier, trader, or innovator, can build resilience alone. The real work lies in aligning their efforts so that trade policy, finance, and infrastructure move in the same direction.
Across the continent, agricultural institutions often operate in silos. Ministries regulate, banks lend, traders respond to market demand, and innovators develop tools; each acting rationally within their domain but rarely in unison. The result is effort without integration. Policies exist, but execution stalls. Investments are made, but impact remains local. What’s missing is not intent but orchestration.
A resilient grain market depends on more than good harvests. It needs predictable standards, affordable finance, and efficient logistics. Governments can create enabling policies, yet they depend on financial institutions to assume lending risk and on private companies to deliver storage, transport, and processing solutions. Banks can design new products, but only if contracts are enforceable and supply chains are transparent. Technology can digitize trade, but adoption relies on clear rules and public systems that function. Each link depends on the next, and that interdependence makes collaboration an operational requirement, not a philosophical one.
In many trade corridors, inefficiency stems less from a scarcity of capital and more from misaligned investment. Warehouses stand empty because digital inventory systems were never installed. Fintech tools struggle to scale because they are not linked to customs or trade data. Development programs pilot excellent ideas that fade when their funding cycles end. Collaboration, structured around shared data, co-financing, and joint risk management, acts as infrastructure in itself.
Examples from across Africa show that coordinated investment can work when designed around shared systems. In Kenya, the Warehouse Receipt System (WRS), implemented by the Warehouse Receipt System Council and supported by the Eastern Africa Grain Council (EAGC), has allowed farmers and traders to store grain in certified warehouses and use receipts as collateral. Commercial banks such as Equity Bank and Co-operative Bank of Kenya have extended credit against these receipts, lowering borrowing risks and improving cash flow for processors and aggregators. In Rwanda, the Rwanda Grains and Cereals Corporation (RGCC) and partners, including KCB Bank Rwanda, have piloted similar models, linking warehouse receipts to digital finance platforms to expand access to working capital for smallholders.
In Nigeria, blended finance initiatives such as the Anchor Borrowers’ Program, and in Ethiopia, cooperative-based storage and grading systems backed by local banks, have produced comparable results. These examples confirm that when finance, policy, and infrastructure align, risk falls across the chain. The challenge is to shift from donor-supported pilots to nationally coordinated systems built on common standards, open data, and transparent oversight.
The Zanzibar Declaration interprets “resilience” in concrete terms: lower transaction costs, faster cross-border movement, and integration of informal traders into formal channels. Each of those goals depends on multiple actors working in sequence. Mutual recognition agreements on grain standards, for example, reduce duplication in testing, but only if regulators trust one another’s results, laboratories meet uniform accreditation, and traders have real-time access to certification data. The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) offer similar potential: it can simplify cross-border transactions, but only if central banks, commercial banks, and fintechs integrate it into their existing infrastructure.
Another important shift in the declaration is how it frames inclusion. Bringing women and youth into formal trade networks is not presented as a social aspiration but as an efficiency measure. Informality across border economies restricts data collection, tax revenues, and access to finance. Integrating these traders, through targeted lending, cooperative structures, or digital identity systems, expands the market base and makes risk easier to price. Inclusion, in this light, becomes a mechanism for growth.
The declaration also breaks new ground in accountability. It commits all stakeholders to review progress at the next African Grain Trade Summit in 2027, a practical step that could redefine how Africa measures the implementation of trade and agricultural commitments. For that to hold meaning, progress tracking must go beyond conference reports. It will need publicly available data dashboards, regional scorecards, and transparent reporting on investments and outcomes.
Africa’s grain markets are central to both food security and regional trade. They employ millions, supply essential commodities, and anchor a growing agro-processing sector. Yet their long-term stability depends less on the number of policies written than on the quality of partnerships formed to implement them. The Zanzibar Declaration signals a maturing understanding of that fact: collaboration is not a rhetorical ideal but the foundation of effective market design.
If the institutions involved; governments, banks, innovators, and development partners—can align around shared systems, Africa’s grain trade can evolve from fragmented national markets into integrated regional networks. The path forward is collective; the framework now exists. The real test of resilience will be whether the continent can move from resolutions to results, together. Find the Declaration here.