FAO’s Expert Consultation: Regional Foresight Exercise for the Near East and North Africa Region
Cairo (Egypt), Hybrid Event, 07/12/2023
Responding to calls by the 28th Committee on Agriculture and FAO Members, FAO is systematically engaging in foresight activities at corporate, regional, sub-regional and country levels for the transformation of agrifood systems. In this endeavour, the Organization benefits from the experience gained during the Corporate Strategic Foresight Exercise (CSFE) 2020-22 and its findings, portrayed in the recent FAO flagship report The future of food and agriculture – Drivers and triggers for transformation (FOFA-DTT).
FAO is now pushing forward on the decision to implement Regional Foresight Exercises (RFEs) with and in all FAO Regions, and regionalize strategic foresight based on the methodology of the FOFA-DTT. The goals of the RFE in RNE are to contributing to regional and country-level programming exercises; providing a forward-looking framework to support policy making processes of Members in the Region; and enhancing institutional capacities on strategic foresight exercises at regional, sub regional and country level. This foresight exercise will also support the deliberations during the 37th session of the Near East Regional Conference (4th and 5th of March 2024), and the work planning for FAORNE for 2024-25.
The FAO Office for the Near East and North Africa region (FAORNE), with the support of the ESA Policy Intelligence Branch-Global Perspectives (PIB-GB) team, along with the Office of Strategy, Programme and Budget (OSP), the Office of Innovation (OIN), and the broader FAO Foresight Network (FFN), began the first phase of the RFE for the region in September of 2023 with a hybrid Inception workshop done in Cairo.
Now, in accordance with the RFE methodological steps, FAO is organizing a RFE Expert Consultation with the goal of presenting and seeking validation of the work done so far in the RFE workplan and to get further feedback and insights to enrich the RNE-RFE Report as the team moves forward with the first phase workplan.
AIMS
The insights and goals to be obtained from regional experts during the RFE Expert consultation:
- Present historical trends and projections of key variables for priority Drivers in the Region and related weak signals.
- Present regionalized FOFA-DTT scenarios, regional challenges, triggers for transformation.
- Discuss and obtain insights on strategic policy options and regional investment priorities.
- Gather feedback in order to validate current findings and enrich the final version of the RNE-RFE first phase Report.