The experts who spoke during Africa Food Systems Forum's side event on private-sector investment in fertiliser and soil health in Kigali said there is a need to implement the declaration.
Director of Strategic Partnerships at Yara International Øystein Botillen said a task force had been established to see how the private sector can be unified.
“There is an aim to unify this voice and articulate some clear messages to those that would be supporting the implementation of the Nairobi Declaration as well as the Kampala strategy,” Botillen said.
The task force came up with a plan to support a Pan-African Fertiliser Development Association, which later rebranded as Africa Fertiliser Industrial Development Association (AFIDA).
AFIDA was launched last year.
Botillen said the association is actively engaging others on building on the position paper, engaging with agricultural interest groups and also increasingly articulating some key messages to governments and development partners.
AFIDA director general Innocent Okuku said there is a need for consistent conversation across industry actors.
Okuku said some subsidy programmes that discourage private-sector participation in fertiliser supply should be changed.
“In some countries, private-sector companies supply subsidised fertiliser to farmers but do not get paid for one or two years. If you use your own money to purchase and supply a product and then do not get paid, your business can collapse. So, when the government comes the following year and says it wants to subsidise fertilisers again, companies become reluctant to participate because they do not want to risk losing more money,” he said.
The Nairobi declaration outlines commitments to enhance agricultural productivity by improving soil health.
Experts are concerned that agricultural productivity relies on cropland expansion and is characterised by slow productivity growth rates, soil nutrient depletion, low farmer incomes, land degradation, carbon dioxide emissions, biodiversity loss and high environmental costs.
They said challenges related to food and nutrition insecurity, malnutrition, and climate change persist and require urgent attention.
Senior vice president and head of Business Unit Africa at Yara International Alexandre Macedo said Africa’s food security begins with the health of its soils.
"If we are serious about enabling farmers to produce more, earn more and build resilience for generations to come, we should move beyond asking how much fertiliser we use and focus on how intelligently we use every nutrient," he said.
Macedo said balanced crop nutrition, informed by soil conditions and combined with good agricultural practices, can help restore soil fertility, improve productivity and make farming more profitable and resilient.
"The private sector thus needs to move beyond providing quality fertiliser, to bringing science, innovation, practical agronomic knowledge and solutions closer to farmers."
Building soil health and regenerating degraded soils is critical for sustainable food systems transformation.
This requires the prioritisation of integrated soil and water conservation and management at watershed, landscape, or catchment levels.
They said supporting mechanisms and incentives are needed to enable improvement in farmer investments in soil health.
The Nairobi declaration seeks to reverse land degradation and restore soil health on at least 30 per cent of degraded soil by 2034.
It seeks to ensure that innovative incentive mechanisms, including repurposing current subsidy programmes are deployed to encourage soil health investments by smallholder farmers.
The declaration also seeks to promote integrated soil and water conservation, planning, and management practices across agricultural sub-sectors and landscapes and promote investments in irrigation as part of integrated soil and water resource management for enhancing nutrient-use efficiency and climate change resilience.
It also seeks to strengthen national, regional and international collaborative research and extension systems to tackle soil health challenges and improve the quality of support to smallholder farmers.
