World Potato Congress president, Romain Cools, has been asked to participate at the 11th African Potato Association Conference in Kigali, Rwanda, in August 2019. Cools is expected to present WPC’s Potato Value Chain Toolbox. This toolbox was developed following WPC’s participation at the 2016 African Potato Association conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The WPC Toolbox was designed to address, in specific ways, the needs of individuals and communities by providing assistance in improving lives through the improvement of the potato value chain. In some contexts, it is also seen as a way to alleviate poverty.
The African Potato Association (APA) is a non-profit organization formed in 1983 whose core objective is to promote the production and utilization of potato and sweet potato for food and nutrition security in Africa. Additionally, the APA facilitates knowledge sharing by bringing together diverse stakeholders in the potato sector across Africa, drawing scientists, practitioners and entrepreneurs from over 20 African countries and abroad.
Rwanda was selected for the 11th Triennial APA Conference because of the critical role the potato and sweet potato contribute towards its food security, nutrition, and income generation. The Rwanda Board of Agriculture and the International Potato Center have joined together to host this international event for an expected 400 participants. The conference begins on the evening of August 25th through August 29, 2019. It includes 2.5 days of presentations at the Kigali Conference Center in the capital and 1.5 days for field trips. The conference theme is: “Leveraging potato and sweet potato contribution to sustainable nutritious food systems.” Conference sub-themes include:
1. Increasing Productivity and Nutrition Quality through Breeding and Crop Management
2. Addressing the Seed System Bottleneck
3. Assuring Healthy and Safe Diets in a Changing World
4. Innovating Solutions to Post-harvest Management, Processing Technologies, and Marketing Systems
5. Exploiting the Digital Revolution for Technology Delivery, Communication & Advocacy Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
6. Reaching End Users at Scale, Youth, and Gender Engagement
Additional information on the African Potato Association conference can be found at https://www.africanpotatoassociation.org/.
To view the World Potato Congress Potato Value Chain Toolbox, please visit www.potatocongress.org.
