The FCI4Africa project champions a holistic approach to African agriculture, promoting fair, sustainable, climate-neutral, and health-promoting trading practices while ensuring economic prosperity at all levels and respecting human rights. It bridges the gap between technical compliance and social justice by empowering smallholder farmers and small and medium-sized enterprises, facilitating trade compliance through a digital platform, and enhancing food safety. By evaluating the impact of certification criteria like deforestation-free, organic, and fair trade, and guiding policymakers, FCI4Africa fosters a just transition for African farmers, processors, and traders, expanding their intra-African, and EU trading opportunities. Leveraging past projects and cutting-edge technologies, FCI4Africa connects stakeholders across diverse regions and jurisdictions, paving the way for a more sustainable and equitable African agricultural sector.

NESTLER is a joint project between the EU and African member states designed to promote One-Health sustainable partnership. The project aims to bring together interdisciplinary technological advances to effectively monitor the well-being of animals, plants, and humans in a holistic approach. The complementarity between the stakeholders will extend upon the ongoing initiatives from FARM2FORK strategies that have resulted in integrated software systems and solutions. The novelty of the NESTLER project lies in the development and integration of advanced remote sensing technologies. The project platform will develop software interfaces for ingesting satellite data sources along with video streams captured from unmanned aerial vehicles and other IoT devices installed for monitoring the environmental and animal well-being. The large-volume of data ingested into the platform will be subjected to additional processing for the extraction of intuitive insights with the assistance of machine learning algorithms and deep-learning network architectures. The extracted insights will be translated into predictive models affecting One-Health sustainability programme using the machine automation. Additionally, the NESTLER project will also undertake research activities to investigate the impact of insect protein on the circular economy for the well-being of animals. The project will develop methodologies for edible insect farming which will be in animal farming. The project will also conduct research studies on the impact of animal waste in crop-based farming. In complementary to the analysis of health benefits, the project will also undertake efforts to evaluate the economic sustainability of such farming practices which will lead to the setup to joint EU-Africa joint task force on One-Health Sustainability. The outcome of the project will result in a transition from a linear economy to a circular economy delivering sustained growth and development.

Nematodes and weevils of banana with Panama disease globally affect food security, causing yearly crop losses for many billion € in Canary Islands, Caribbean and Africa. These threats concomitantly affect crops in tropical and sub-tropical systems. In regions such as Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) millions of farmers rely on cooking banana, plantain and ensete as starch staple food crops and for income. Pesticides no longer represent a sustainable option for control, and many have been progressively withdrawn from use in the EU or are highly restricted, due to harmful effects on the environment and toxic residues. In SSA, where phytosanitary policies and regulations are often less effective, such pesticides are still being (mis)used, posing a significant threat to vulnerable farmers and consumers. In the absence of long term strategies or suitable control methods, and under the influence of changing climates in tropical and subtropical regions, the banana crops are becoming ever more exposed to pathogens and pests due to higher multiplication rates and prevalence induced by temperatures and rainfall patterns. The principal outcome of this project will be to achieve sustainable intensification of Musa spp. and ensete crops, through identification, development and implementation of IPM based on beneficial microorganisms. MUSA proposes, in a holistic view, IPM methods based on microbial consortia and banana germplasm, studying the plant reactions (phenotypic and molecular) to different biotic stresses. This will be achieved by screening, testing and evaluating in the field, selected banana lines, in an attempt to identify (via transcriptomic analyses) the principal genes involved in driving a resistant/succumbent response, and the interaction with beneficial microorganisms. The latter include endophytes and biocontrol agents (EBCAs) integrated with plant germplasm to develop information-based IPM strategies through field trials.