Cape Town will host the 8th annual Argus FMB Africa Fertilizer conference, which will take place on 15-17 February 2017, thus bringing the world’s biggest conference of its kind to southern Africa for the first time. The conference is organized by Argus, leading commodity price reporting, consulting and events company.
The high-profile event will see the launch of two major industry initiatives – the development of the African Fertilizer Access Index (TAFAI) and the annual report on fertilizer consumption in Africa prepared by the International Fertilizer Industry Association (IFA) called Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP). TAFAI measures the status of the enabling environment for fertilizer in national markets, the impact on the performance of these markets, and the desired outcomes in terms of accessibility, availability and incentives to use fertilizers by smallholder farmers in Africa. The index combines six composite indicators — research and development, fertilizer quality, industry competitiveness, market access, services to smallholder farmers, fertilizer policy, and regulations and institutional support.
The February conference will feature more than 30 speakers who will look for new ways to increase African farmers’ access to crop nutrients and consequently to increase agricultural yields across the continent. “We have been running this conference for many years,” Argus Media CEO Adrian Binks said and added that “in the last 12 months we have seen a big surge in interest, in line with a renewal of political will to bring transformative changes to African agriculture. Cape Town is proving to be a very popular location and we are expecting our biggest ever attendance.”
The keynote speaker at the conference will be Tarik Choho, Chief Executive of OCP Africa, the lead sponsor of the conference. OCP Africa has recently announced a number of new investments thus establishing a presence in a number of new locations across Africa. One of the most significant projects that OCP is involved in is the upcoming Morocco-Ethiopia plan to build a $2.5 billion fertilizer plant in eastern Ethiopia.
