Priorities for Africa's food and nutrition security post-covid-19. A contribution from the Task Force Rural Africa (TFRA) to the AU-EU Summit, October 2020

A deep sense of concern about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the lives and livelihoods of Africa’s people has inspired the writing of this contribution. As members of the Task Force Rural Africa (TFRA), we produced a report in March 2019 on what we thought was needed to transform Africa’s agriculture and rural economy. Less than one year later, COVID-19 struck Africa and the rest of the world with devastating effect. Another important change since March 2019 has been the shift on climate policy, represented by the EU Commission proposal in December 2019 of the European Green Deal (EGD). This ambitious vision, aimed at making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, will have implications for Africa – Europe relations. The combination of COVID-19’s impact on Africa and the EU’s climate policy change has led us to re-examine the analysis and the recommendations in our original report. We have drawn one central conclusion from our work: that food and nutrition security has become of such fundamental political, economic and social importance that it must be at the centre of all future policy and planning. We have built our report on this conclusion and produced a set of short and long-term recommendations we believe are relevant to the new world shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope our contribution may help in the preparation of the AU-EU Summit in October 2020. The Summit will seek to agree the long-term basis for partnership between Africa and the EU. It will meet at a crucially important time, shortly before the US Presidential election, when the world will be looking to see how Africa and Europe, separately and in partnership, can contribute to an effective multilateral response to global challenges and the current COVID-19 crisis. We wish the leaders well in their efforts

Correction:How the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the necessity of animal research (vol 30, pg R1014, 2020)

(Current Biology 30, R1014–R1018; September 21, 2020) As a result of an author oversight in the originally published version of this article, a number of errors were introduced in the author list and affiliations. First, the middle initials were omitted from the names of several authors. Second, the surname of Dr. van Dam was mistakenly written as “Dam.” Third, the first name of author Bernhard Englitz was misspelled as “Bernard” and the surname of author B.J.A. Pollux was misspelled as “Pullox.” Finally, Dr. Keijer's first name was abbreviated rather than written in full. These errors, as well as various errors in the author affiliations, have now been corrected online

PRIORITIES FOR AFRICA’S FOOD AND NUTRITION SECURITY POST-COVID-19. A contribution from the Task Force Rural Africa (TFRA) to the AU-EU Summit, October 2020.

A deep sense of concern about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the lives and livelihoods of Africa’s people has inspired the writing of this contribution. As members of the Task Force Rural Africa (TFRA), we produced a report in March 2019 on what we thought was needed to transform Africa’s agriculture and rural economy. Less than one year later, COVID-19 struck Africa and the rest of the world with devastating effect. Another important change since March 2019 has been the shift on climate policy, represented by the EU Commission proposal in December 2019 of the European Green Deal (EGD). This ambitious vision, aimed at making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, will have implications for Africa – Europe relations. The combination of COVID-19’s impact on Africa and the EU’s climate policy change has led us to re-examine the analysis and the recommendations in our original report. We have drawn one central conclusion from our work: that food and nutrition security has become of such fundamental political, economic and social importance that it must be at the centre of all future policy and planning. We have built our report on this conclusion and produced a set of short and long-term recommendations we believe are relevant to the new world shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope our contribution may help in the preparation of the AU-EU Summit in October 2020. The Summit will seek to agree the long-term basis for partnership between Africa and the EU. It will meet at a crucially important time, shortly before the US Presidential election, when the world will be looking to see how Africa and Europe, separately and in partnership, can contribute to an effective multilateral response to global challenges and the current COVID-19 crisis. We wish the leaders well in their efforts

An Africa-Europe agenda for rural transformation

According to the commissioners Josefa Leonel Correira Sacko (Rural Economy and Agriculture, African Union Commission), Neven Mimica (International Cooperation & Development), and Phil Hogan (Agriculture & Rural Development), the report… • recognizes the new reality of Africa and Europe as global partners on an equal footing, and that each region must steer its own development. • argues that the solution to agriculture will be found beyond agriculture, through a territorial approach to rural development in the widest sense. • stresses the importance of good policy as the key to developing the agri-food sector and rural areas. • demonstrates that farmers and the food industry are in it together and should work hand in hand to take the new opportunities that the African Continental Free Trade Area will offer and also, build the regional markets needed for Africa’s long term food security. • gives a democratic and legitimacy that is at the heart of responsible investment and sustainable development, by recommending to directly involve farmers, cooperatives, civil society, and the private sector in policymaking and in their own futures. The Task Force recommends the African Union and the European Union to develop a partnership operating on three levels: government to government, business to business, and people to people. In the next months, the European Commission and the African Union will decide how to translate the Report into action on the ground

From thick to thin regional identities?

Regions and regional identity have become more important over the last decades. At the same time regions have become less discernable as distinct historically rooted spatial entities. Globalisation and the decline of collective identities through individualisation transform both this regional reality and how regions are conceptualised. This article analyses the shifts in types of regional identities used by regional administrations in an increasingly competitive environment. It uses the contrast between ‘thick’ traditional and historical rooted well-established regional identities, and ‘thin’ regional identities which are more transitory and focus more on economic competitiveness. These concepts are used to analyse the regional identity of regional administrations in Northwest Germany and the Netherlands. Hybrid regional identities combining a locally specific mix of thick and thin elements of regional identity, and which link up with regional identities at other relevant scales, appear to be the most effective regional identities for regional administrations facing the challenges of both globalisation and the decline in collective identities