German Ambassador Launches the “Potato Initiative Africa” in Nairobi

The German Ambassador to Kenya, Andreas Peschke last month launched the “Potato Initiative Africa” in Nairobi.

Experts of the ‘potato economy’ from Germany and Kenya will work together to promote innovative business models aiming to establish and strengthen competitive national value chains for the benefit of smallholders as well as to raise productivity and increase the access to markets for the producers.

The Ambassador underlined that food and nutrition security as well as rural development are priorities of German development cooperation. To sustainably feed a rapidly increasing world population is an important challenge to cope with today. The sustainable increase in food production of smallholders in developing and emerging economies has a great potential to close the threatening gap between demand and supply.

He stressed that the “Potato Initiative Africa” is a key pillar of the German Food Partnership targeting the development of a comprehensive approach to establish inclusive and competitive potato value chains in Kenya.

Our long-term experience in development cooperation has shown, that partnerships are profitable for both sides. Ambassador Peschke stressed: “We need to strengthen our official cooperation and public-private cooperation. But we also need to strengthen the cooperation between private entities on both sides, that is between German and international companies on the one hand side, and local companies and local farmers on the other hand side.” Such private-private approaches are needed complementary to the support of public entities. This is the approach of the German Food Partnership.

The German Food Partnership is an innovative initiative for the implementation of Food and Agriculture projects in development countries. It enables German and international enterprises of the agriculture and food industry sector, German development agencies as well as other organizations from science, civil society and the public sector to join forces in contributing to food and nutrition security. GIZ is coordinating the initiative on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Download the Potato Initiative Flyer.