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Purpose
22 August 2008

The conference will take place October 5-9th 2008 at the Leisure Lodge Resort in Mombasa, Kenya. If you have not done so already, please register as soon as possible (late registration fees will become effective September 15), and we encourage participants to carefully read travel and visa requirements.

 

We are pleased to announce an Africa-based conference will focus on banana and plantain across Africa: lessons learnt and the way forward. There is an urgent need to target basic and applied research that connects to existing and emerging markets. This unique conference will be the first pan-African meeting to link research to markets in an African context. Results from this conference will change the way in which bananas are currently produced and marketed by providing a strategy to link state of the art research to new markets to stimulate trade.

 

The conference actively solicited and obtained input from all stakeholders - scientists, farmers, trade specialists, policy makers and the private sector – and serves as a unique forum to bring these together. Key priorities are:

·            develop a strategy for the next decade to exploit banana research for African economic growth,

·            strengthen research partnerships to overcome production bottlenecks,

·            focus research on meeting the challenges of evolving production trends, emerging markets and trade networks.

 

This conference is urgently needed as banana and plantain are key staple crops in rural households in Africa, which are being increasingly targeted for income generation through improved linkages with the private sector. The conference is particularly opportune in the face of rising global food prices, and therefore intends to foster research and trade experiences from other commodities. The result of this meeting will be to fully realize the potential of this crucial crop for poverty alleviation and wealth generation.

 


The key product of the conference will be a 10-year, knowledge-based research-for-development strategy for banana in Africa, that will mobilize the banana sector and lift people out of poverty, by better linking researchers with farmers and other stakeholders, farmers with markets, and researchers and farmers with private and public sector actors, towards a change in banana production from donor aid-supported to a system sustained by an invigorated private sector that actively seeks technological interventions. We hope that millions of African farmers will benefit from the results generated due to this conference.

This conference is being organized by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in partnership with Bioversity International, the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), the International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) and the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute (KARI). We invite you to join us towards a successful and fruitful conference.

 

The conference will be officially opened on Sunday, 5 October, including an “all-Tooke” dinner hosted by the Presidential Initiative on Banana Industrial Development (PIBID). The conference will feature keynote addresses by Anna Tibaijuka, Undersecretary-General of the United Nations and Director of UN-HABITAT, and Karl Falkenberg, Deputy Director General for Trade of the European Commission.

Click here to download our April press release (27 kB, Word format).

Click here to download our June press release (34 kB, Word format).

Click here to download our flyer (465 kB, JPEG format).

Click here to download our corporate rates (133 kB, Word format).

Click here to download an updated summary of the conference (153 kB, Word format).

 

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