Spring Meeting 2026

This roundtable is part of the ATLAS MAVA FORUM, a joint initiative bringing together the ATLAS and MAVA platforms to tackle Africa’s agricultural financing coordination challenge, connecting national plans to capital, DFIs to bankable pipelines, and farmers to scalable technology and finance.

Roundtable session co-built with WBG, INNOVX and ATLAS

This session will explore how coordinated platforms can help overcome one of the most persistent constraints in African agriculture: translating national strategies, reform agendas, and investment plans into coherent, financeable, and scalable pipelines that mobilize both public and private capital. The discussion will place AgriConnect at the center of this coordination challenge, while also illustrating how partnerships between the World Bank Group and strategic actors—such as OCP—can support its objectives. In this context, initiatives like MAVA provide a concrete example of how public‑private collaboration can help operationalize AgriConnect priorities and move beyond fragmented interventions toward integrated, country‑led financing approaches. AgriConnect is the World Bank Group’s flagship initiative to transform agriculture and agribusiness by integrating policy reform, public investment, advisory support, and private sector finance. It aims to help farmers transition from subsistence to more productive, market-oriented systems, while generating jobs, strengthening food systems, and mobilizing large-scale investment. With a target of improving the livelihoods of 300 million farmers by 2030, AgriConnect focuses on three pillars—strengthening foundations, reforming policies, and mobilizing capital—and operates as a collaborative platform that brings together governments, private sector actors, and development partners to scale impact at country and value chain levels.

The session aims to examine how AgriConnect can function as a country-level coordination framework that effectively aligns policy reforms, public investment, and private sector engagement. It will also seek to identify concrete actions that can be further developed in collaboration with interested stakeholders to enhance agri-finance mobilization and support the scaling of sustainable agricultural investment.

Participants:

• Anup Jagwani, Global Director, Farming and Agribusiness, World Bank Group
• Hajar Alafifi, Chief Executive Officer, OCP Africa
• Hamza Chaham, Chief Executive Officer, SOWIT-TAKAMOUL
• Patrick Dupoux, Senior Partner Director, Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
• Chakib Jenane, Regional Practice Director, Planet Department, West and Central Africa, World Bank Group (WBG)
• Emmanuel Marchant, Senior Vice President, Sustainability and Partnerships, General Manager, Danone Ecosystem
• David Tinel, Regional Manager Maghreb, International Finance Corporation (IFC)
• Younes Addou, Vice President Agribusiness & Sustainability Solutions, InnovX
• Lawrence Haddad, Executive Director, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN)
• Carl Manlan, Chief, Partnerships and Business Development, AGRA
• Fiona Hoffman, Director of Strategic Partnerships and Growth, PULA

This roundtable is part of the ATLAS MAVA FORUM, a joint initiative bringing together the ATLAS and MAVA platforms to tackle Africa’s agricultural financing coordination challenge, connecting national plans to capital, DFIs to bankable pipelines, and farmers to scalable technology and finance.

African agriculture faces a stark paradox: a continent holding 60% of the world’s arable land yet struggling with a $200 billion annual financing gap and a deep coordination disconnect that keeps promising innovations trapped at pilot stage. While agri-tech startups, climate-smart practices and digital tools are multiplying across the continent, structural barriers — fragmented ecosystems, misaligned investment pipelines and weak links to national priorities — prevent them from scaling across value chains.  

This roundtable brings together decision-makers to bridge that gap. Drawing on the Briters Innovation Report, participants will diagnose the state of African agri-innovation, pinpoint the bottlenecks blocking scale and long-term capital, and define the roles of DFIs, governments, corporates and philanthropies in de-risking solutions. The goal: identify concrete innovation-to-investment pathways that ATLAS can advance in its 2026 work programme — turning ecosystem dynamism into structured, investment-ready pipelines that deliver real impact for farmers and food systems at scale. 

Participants:

• Younes Addou, Vice President Agribusiness & Sustainability Solutions, InnovX
• Racine Ly, Director, Data Intelligence and Governance, AKADEMIYA2063
• Carl Manlan, Chief, Partnerships and Business Development, AGRA
• Jihane Ajijti, Africa & Brazil Director, TOURBA
• Meryem Bennis, Investment Officer, Global Agriconnect Platform Morocco, International Finance Corporation (IFC)
• Sandrine Dury, Regional Director for the Mediterranean, Middle East, and Balkan Countries, CIRAD
• Maryam Guessous, Head of Domseeds, Studio Les Domaines
• Raphael Hara, Managing Director, Ksapa
• Fiona Hoffman, Director of Strategic Partnerships and Growth, PULA
• Agnes Matilda Kalibata, Founder & CEO, C4Impact Advisory ; Former President, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)
• Marie-Claire Kalihangabo, Coordinator Africa Fertilizer Financing Mechanism, African Development Bank
• Bruno Meireles de Sousa, Operating Partner, Bidra Innovation Ventures
• Vasco Molini, Program Manager, 50×2030 Initiative, World Bank
• Celso Moretti, Ex-President, Embrapa
• David Saunders, Director of Strategy and Growth, Briter
• Aniss Bouraqqadi, Agronomy Director, OCP Nutricrops

Organised in collaboration with the Mediterranean Action Committee

The two shores of the Mediterranean are now experiencing structural complementarity. On the one hand, Europe is facing growing pressure on its agricultural labor markets: in France alone, France Travail anticipates more than 200,000 new hires in the sector, against a backdrop of accelerated demographic aging and a decline in local workers’ interest in agricultural jobs. On the other, the southern Mediterranean has a young, available, and increasingly skilled workforce. This imbalance presents an opportunity and calls for coordinated policy responses. Indeed, while certain migration corridors already exist (Andalusia alone accounts for more than 93,000 foreign agricultural workers, representing over a third of Spain’s national total), they remain insufficiently expanded and undersized relative to the scale of the need.  

Circular seasonal migration schemes therefore emerge as a concrete response to the imbalances in European agricultural labor markets and, more broadly, as a lever for Euro-Mediterranean integration. This roundtable aims to examine, based on concrete experiences, seasonal agricultural mobility schemes and the conditions under which they can become a sustainable driver of regional integration (human mobility, economic efficiency, and political and social sustainability). It will focus on an emblematic case: the agri-food supply chains linking Morocco, Andalusia, and southern France, as exemplified by the Azura Group. This model, with a logistics hub in Montpellier, production in the Sahara, and Franco-Moroccan joint capital, illustrates how integrated value chains can emerge around labor mobility. Discussions will also focus on the social dimension of these networks: relying largely on a female seasonal workforce, they represent a lever for economic empowerment, provided that working conditions live up to this commitment. 

Participants:

• Hakim El Karoui, Founding partner, Volentia, President & Founder, Action Committee for the Mediterranean
• Martin Fortes Delacroix, Regional Coordinator for North Africa, Expertise France
• Marc Reverdin, Secretary-General, Action Committee for the Mediterranean
• Abir Lemseffer, Deputy CEO, Azura ; President of the Strategy Committee, Danone Morocco

Africa faces a dual crisis: a $200 billion agricultural financing gap and a hidden hunger epidemic, with 925 million people unable to afford healthy diets and 80% of women in Sub-Saharan Africa deficient in at least one micronutrient. Decades of intensive farming and soil degradation have quietly stripped staple crops of essential nutrients — a crisis largely invisible yet affecting billions.

The solution lies beneath our feet. Agronomic biofortification — improving nutritional quality through better soil health, micronutrient-enriched fertilizers and resilient seed varieties — offers a scalable, cost-effective pathway from soil to health. But scaling it demands coordinated action across the entire value chain, from farmers and researchers to processors, financiers and policymakers.

This roundtable explores how to turn that vision into reality: aligning incentives, structuring partnerships and shifting agriculture’s measure of success from yield alone to nutrition, livelihoods and sustainability.

Participants:

Resilient and sustainable transition mineral value chains are central to the energy transition, digital economy and industrial resilience. Yet, current financing frameworks in minerals value chains are not delivering investment at the scale or speed required. The IEA estimates USD 800 billion in mining investment will be needed by 2040 to stay on a 1.5°C pathway, while UNCTAD points to a USD 225 billion shortfall in developing economies alone. This closed-door session will bring together Members and Special Advisors of the Global Council for Responsible Transition Minerals, government representatives, development banks experts, industry and civil society to tackle the most pressing challenges and solutions to financing responsible minerals value chains. This session will also be an opportunity for the Working Group on Financing Responsible Transition Minerals, convened by the Paris Peace Forum, to present its recently adopted policy note. With the French G7 Presidency placing financing transition minerals value chains at the top of the multilateral agenda ahead of the Evian Summit, this session offers a critical window to align credible financing approaches with resource-rich producing countries expectations.  

Participants:

• Adrien Abecassis, Chief Policy Officer, Paris Peace Forum
• Noemie Benfella, Junior Policy Analyst, OECD
• Assheton Carter, Executive Director, Fair Cobalt Alliance
• Vincenzo Conforti, Head of Government Relations Europe, Glencore
• Siobhan Kaltenbacher, Advisor on Governance, Fragility and Conflict, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)
• Bertrand Poche, Deputy Director, AFD Office – Morocco
• Gordon Poole, Director, Isvern Advisory
• Céline Kauffmann, Chief Programmes Officer, IDDRI
• Ma Jun, Founding Director, Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs
• Glen Mpufane, Member of the Global Council for Responsible Transition Minerals; Executive Director, GM Mining ESG Consulting
• Bruno Oberle, President, World Resource Forum Association (WRF)
• Luc Tezenas, Head of Policy and Advocacy, Resource Justice Network
• Etienne Sum Wah, Trade Lead, Embassy of Canada to the Kingdom of Morocco

African states, still grappling with the economic aftershocks of the Russia–Ukraine war, are now faced with the additional side effects of the US-Iran war such as spikes in energy prices, trade disruptions, or financial volatility. The suspension of fertilizer supply chains through the Gulf region for instance is dramatically affecting African agribusiness, agrarian smallholder economies and food security.  

As geopolitical tensions intensify and conflicts multiply worldwide, security and economic sovereignty are increasingly dominating national and global agendas and budgets. The succession of crises the world is undergoing demonstrates how fundamental building resilience has become. In this context, what space is left for development priorities and fair transitions? Can the momentum behind the 2030 Agenda survive in a world marked by fragmentation, strategic competition and the weakening of international institutions and rules?  

This panel will explore how Africa can navigate this complex matrix of disruptions, instability and aid cuts in a world marked by intensifying great-power rivalry and regional conflict. It will also discuss how cooperation can adapt to these shifting dynamics, how resilience can be built and reinforced, how resources can be mobilized through multilateral efforts and also how African domestic resources mobilization can be accelerated, to face the world’s most crucial challenges and ensure sustainable and resilient development, particularly in Africa.  

Participants:

The panel examines how recent global crises—COVID‑19, the war in Ukraine, and fertilizer market disruptions—have exposed deep structural weaknesses in Africa’s food systems. Despite vast agricultural potential, Africa remains highly dependent on food and fertilizer imports, leaving it vulnerable to external shocks. These crises have highlighted the urgent need for greater food and input self‑sufficiency. At the same time, the shocks have clarified solutions: boosting domestic fertilizer production, reducing import reliance, strengthening regional value chains, and aligning policy, investment, and implementation. With agriculture already employing over 70% of Africa’s population, the continent has the capacity to feed itself and contribute to global food security if properly financed and coordinated. Building on progress made through the ATLAS sessions on financing, innovation and nutrition, the panel focuses on accelerating concrete action. Its goal is to turn crisis lessons into coordinated public‑private investment and sustained agricultural transformation across Africa.

Participants:

• Antoinette Fenuku-Dukuly, Deputy Minister for Administration in the Ministry of Agriculture, Republic of Liberia
• Younes Addou, Vice President Agribusiness & Sustainability Solutions, InnovX
• Anup Jagwani, Global Director, Farming and Agribusiness, World Bank Group
• Racine Ly, Director, Data Intelligence and Governance, AKADEMIYA2063
• Carl Manlan, Chief, Partnerships and Business Development, AGRA
• Augustin Grandgeorge, Head of Development Initiatives, Paris Peace Forum
• Ahmed El Bouari, Minister of Agriculture, Maritime Fisheries, Rural Development and Water and Forests, Kingdom of Morocco

In an environment of difficult choices and weighing tradeoffs, investing in children becomes a powerful, unifying lever to foster human development and resilience in the most vulnerable populations. The Child Priority Framework (CPF) aims to elevate child wellbeing across the five pillars of health, education, nutrition, protection, and psycho-social development, as a global development priority. As children represent the most effective and most unifying investment for long-term global stability and prosperity, this panel will take stock of progress achieved ahead of the G7 Summit in Evian on the Children’s Agenda.

Participants:

• Yusra Mardini, Olympic Swimmer, Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR
• Trisha Shetty, Founder and President, SheSays ; President of the Steering Committee, Paris Peace Forum
• Zohreen Badruddin, Policy Manager, Childhood Initiative and International Development Funding, Paris Peace Forum

As demand for Transition Minerals accelerates, producer countries in the Global South sit at the heart of new strategic value chains, yet too often remain at the margins of decision-making. In a context where strategic minerals take an increasing share of multilateral discussion, including with the 2026 French Presidency of the G7, this high-level panel, convened with members of the Global Council for Responsible Transition Minerals, will explore how to put the Global South at the center of resilient and sustainable mineral value chains. Bringing together perspectives from governments, industry, and international organizations, speakers will discuss how to reconcile security of supply with equitable value creation and the role of South-South cooperation. The conversation will look into pathways for a global architecture of shared governance for transition minerals.

Participants: 

• Céline Kauffmann, Chief Programmes Officer, IDDRI
• Ma Jun, Founding Director, Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs
• Glen Mpufane, Member of the Global Council for Responsible Transition Minerals ; Executive Director, GM Mining ESG Consulting
• Bruno Oberle, President, World Resource Forum Association (WRF)
• Amine Houssaim, Chief Executive Officer, InnovX

In the wake of Resilient Transitions, and Rabat’s UNESCO designation as the 2026 World Book Capital, this session will explore the role of imaginaries as vectors of freedom and cultural emancipation, as well as the modalities of their circulation, transmission, and collective development with young people.

Organized at the heart of a university of excellence, panelists will highlight how collective narratives, cultural and creative industries, and spaces for dialogue contribute to shaping more open, innovative, and inclusive societies. The discussion will examine the dynamics enabling youth to reclaim, produce, and circulate their own narratives in a world marked by profound transformations and a growing global connectivity.

By bringing together academic, cultural, and institutional actors, the session will analyze how the emergence of new collective imaginaries, in line with the aspirations of a youth facing polycrisis, participates in ongoing intellectual, symbolic, and cultural transitions.

Participants:

• Hajar Azell Chokairi, Writer and cultural entrepreneur, Co-founder of the collective Le cap et la plume ; teaches storytelling and creative writing at UM6P and HEC Paris
• Khalid Chegraoui, Vice-Dean International Relations, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P), Faculty of Governance, Economics, and Social Sciences (FGSES)
• Rabiaa Marhouch, Editor, Writer and Academic