According to Sangwa Sifa Florence who is the CEO of NzeSA Fam Ltd and agricultural social media influencer, she notes that participation in Africa Food Systems Forum (AFS) 2026 in Kigali opened her eyes to the concept of agriculture as something more than just a farm.
She says one of the key lessons she learned from the Forum is that Africa does not have a problem with solutions. Rather, the challenge is to create the mechanisms, partnerships and investment channels needed to scale existing solutions.
AFS brought together farmers, investors, policymakers, researchers, entrepreneurs, development partners and innovators. Sifa says the diversity of participants helped her see agriculture from a different perspective from what she experiences in her daily work.
She says the discussions on agricultural finance were particularly interesting. During a panel discussion on the role of private banks in investing in food and agriculture programmes, she began thinking about how farmers’ access to credit could be redefined.
She suggested that reliable farm-level data, including production, sales, business performance, payment history and market relationships, could help create an alternative to traditional collateral.
She says the idea stayed with her because farmers already provide valuable signals through their business activities. For her, the opportunity lies in turning that data and those signals into trust, and that trust into a means of accessing capital.
AFS also gave her the opportunity to meet and build relationships with diverse people working across the food and agriculture value chain, including people she would not normally encounter in her daily work. She says that, for her, the real opportunity is not simply meeting people at the conference, but seeing what those relationships will lead to after the Forum.
In the case of NzeSA Fam Ltd, Sifa says AFS helped her see the farm not just as a place where production takes place, but as part of a larger value chain.
The discussions on the so-called “hidden middle” were particularly important to her. She says agriculture is not limited to growing crops or raising livestock, as there are also opportunities in aggregation, processing, animal feed, logistics, value addition, markets, technology and data.
This made her start thinking more seriously about how NzeSA could grow from simply producing to becoming a more integrated and investment-ready agribusiness.
AFS also challenged her to think about the data and evidence available in her business. She says that if farm data can help businesses demonstrate performance and credibility to financiers, NzeSA should treat production, financial and market data as strategic business assets rather than simply administrative information.
In terms of her work as an agricultural social media influencer, Sifa says AFS has helped strengthen her positioning. She says she is no longer just someone who talks about agriculture on social media, but is also participating in discussions about financing agriculture, how young people can build businesses, how food systems can be transformed and how farmers’ voices can contribute to the future of agriculture and food in Africa.
She says the Forum reminded her that farmers should be the authors of Africa’s food story, rather than simply its subjects. As a farmer and agricultural advocate, she sees her role as connecting scientific knowledge, policy and investment discussions with the realities of farming.
AFS gave her a bigger platform, but more than anything, she says, it gave her a greater responsibility to use that platform meaningfully.
“Africa doesn’t need more talks about what’s possible,” she says. “We need to create a system where people who are already building solutions can scale to the next level.”
She says this requires finance that understands agriculture, markets that reward farmers, technology that solves real problems, policies that help young people build businesses, and partnerships that continue beyond conferences.
For young people, Sifa says there is a major lesson she took from the Forum: young people are not waiting to become the future of agriculture. They are already building that future today.
She says young people are today’s farmers, entrepreneurs, innovators, researchers, advocates and leaders, but they need a network of tools and support to help them grow.
For Sifa herself, AFS 2026 reinforced the importance of connecting her different roles. She can be a farmer, build NzeSA Fam, reach a wider audience on agriculture through social media, and contribute to discussions on investment and the functioning of the food and agriculture value chain in Africa.
Jean Bernard MUKUNDENTE
RYAF Communication and Public Relations
Email: b.mukundente@ryaf.rw / ryafcommunication@ryaf.rw