The conference will take place October 5-9th 2008 at the Leisure Lodge Resort in
We are pleased to announce an Africa-based conference will focus on banana and plantain across
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

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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