Paris, France--(Newsfile Corp. - December 7, 2023) - A path-breaking international conference, "Transforming Food Systems: Finance, Tech, and Sustainability," was held in Paris on December 6, bringing together experts from around the world to explore the new opportunities that emerging technologies create for accelerating the war against hunger and malnutrition.
The conference was co-hosted by Unitlife, a new division of the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), and Worldview Global Impact (WGI), a New York City-based non-profit that supports projects that promote sustainability and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The conference venue in Paris was Station F, the world's largest startup campus.
Unitlife is a global initiative founded in 2019 to combat chronic malnutrition among mothers and young children in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) through innovative financing models, with current projects in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.
The opening welcome was given by WGI Co-Founders and Co-Chairs Jasmine Wang and Robin Lewis, who also serve on the Advisory Board of Unitlife. In her talk, Ms. Wang emphasized the importance of this initiative and the role of Web 3.0 technologies in offering effective solutions to the funding crisis that global development efforts face today.
Fifteen startup companies in the areas of Web 3.0 and agricultural technology were in attendance as exhibitors in a dedicated space at the conference, which aimed to connect multiple stakeholders, including top development practitioners and international organizations, with tech innovators working at the leading edge of global development challenges.
Among the speakers were: Philippe Douste-Blazy, President of Unitlife and formerly French Minister of Health and Minister of Foreign Affairs; Abdulkareem Al Olama, Managing Director of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives (MBRGI); Mourad Wahba, current head of UNCDF; Benjamin Kumpf, Head of the Innovation for Development Center at OECD; Kagwiria Koome, Director, Food Initiatives at the Rockefeller Foundation; and Rekia Foudel, Managing Director of Barka Impact Fund, among others.
The first panel explored innovation and technology in the critical realm of food security, while the second panel focused on new technologies to generate finance for food systems resilience. The conference wrap-up session offered ambitious agenda-setting for a global food security master plan. A number of the panelists addressed the threats to food security presented by the climate change crisis, emphasizing the necessity of designing flexible and multi-faceted strategies.
In addition, an afternoon session offered the new startups a unique opportunity to present brief summaries of their technology and their possible uses in eradicating global hunger. The presence of the showcased companies was arranged by Haocheng Yang, an award-winning impact investing entrepreneur, who expressed the urgent need for new technology-based sources of financing in this field. Yang said, "We were greatly impressed by the energy and technological know-how of the companies in attendance and we think this conference was critical in introducing these problem-solvers to the policymakers and practitioners there."
The exhibitors and companies of the conference were researched and arranged by Alina Huaize Guo, who has previously worked in agricultural and rural development in China, Morocco, and the US. Working consistently on this conference for over a year now, Guo sought to redefine the concept of "development" by bridging innovative agricultural technologies and the private sector with the model of traditional international development. As an aspiring academic, she arranged speakers from universities and laboratories, as well as grassroots agricultural organizations across continents. By bringing these traditionally separate fields together, she hopes to "rethink the concept of expertise in the developing world. Instead of attempting to find solutions in individual sectors, we need to think about food security and agricultural development as both local and global issues, as both a technological challenge and a substantial dilemma of knowledge production and its complex applications."
Conference participants highlighted the progress being made to create a blueprint for more rapid progress in ensuring a sustainable food security future globally. UN Sustainable Development Goal #2 aims at "Ending Hunger, Achieving Food Security and Improving Nutrition, and Promoting Sustainable Agriculture to End Hunger by 2030." Despite considerable progress in some aspects, participants agreed that this ambitious goal is still not within reach and that all stakeholders must work together to accelerate effective change to achieve true global food security by the end of the current decade.
For further information contact Jasmine Wang at jasmine@worldviewglobal.com and see WGI website at www.worldviewglobal.org.
To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/189768
