What does it feel like being a UN Food Champion?

I have met people who have really changed my mindset and encouraged me to keep making progress and to keep delivering as one of the leading food champions across the globe. So far, we have rolled out close to 41 UN Food Systems Summit Independent Dialogues across the Climate Smart Agriculture Youth Network (CSAYN) countries in Africa.

What are your expectations?

My personal expectation at the start was to meet and engage with young people across the African continent and globally. Equally, I wanted to be the best and most influential food champion by organizing as many dialogues as possible to discuss food systems.

What have you achieved on this front so far?

I was able to establish the Food Systems Summit Heroes (FSSH) database, which currently has 792 members across the world. We rolled out over 41 Food Systems Summit Independent Dialogues across the globe and are still going on; and we established a secretariat to update and coordinate efforts with the UN in regards to the Summit. We also organized two high-level Food Systems Summit Independent Dialogues, that attracted up to700 participants.

The biggest personal satisfaction is that CSAYN Global has gained traction across the world, becoming a reference network. Thus, many young people are excited about joining the network due to the tremendous growth from four countries in 2014 to 90 countries as of May 2021.