Smallscale farmers need the spotlight now: Africa Food Prize winner Kanayo Nwanze speaks out at COP22

The influential African figure champions smallscale agriculture in an increasingly insecure global climate

At vast global gatherings like the COP22 UN climate conference, which has just concluded in Marrakech, the seductive grandeur of the occasion frequently strips attention from the people, in faraway places, who climate change threatens the most.

But on Wednesday at the COP, during a panel discussion on how agriculture can support the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal for zero hunger, Kanayo F. Nwanze brought these forgotten people into the spotlight with an impassioned plea. To achieve food security in a changing climate, we need to focus on the world's smallscale farmers-who are not only responsible for the bulk of food production in developing countries, but ironically face some of the worst threats to their own food security, Nwanze said. As the president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), an organisation that invests in smallscale agriculture in rural environments around the world, Nwanze's work to highlight the importance of these farmers on the global agriculture scene won him the inaugural Africa Food Prize in 2016.