This month, international leaders, farmers, agribusiness executives and development experts from across the globe will get together in Des Moines, Iowa, in the United States, for the yearly symposium known as the Borlaug Dialogue, to reflect on key challenges facing global food security and nutrition. The international symposium is organised annually by the World Food Prize Foundation.

Africa is expected to feature prominently in the three-day programme, beginning from the 18th. President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina, who is the 2017 World Food Prize Laureate, will speak at the event. And the theme of the conference is: “The Road Out of Poverty.”

Part of the reason Africa will feature in the discussions is because the continent continues to be affected by food insecurity, exacerbated by conflicts and climate change. Africa’s food insecurity has become a global concern.

This year, the Borlaug Dialogue will look at agriculture’s potential to lift people out of poverty. As Adesina and others have argued, for Africa to be food-secure, the agriculture sector should not only focus on solving hunger problems; it needs to focus also on solving economic problems. African agriculture has the potential to generate wealth and improve the lives of an estimated 767 million people living in extreme poverty on the continent – and lift them out of poverty.