The FAO Regional Foresight Exercise aims to support governments in their efforts to transform the agrifood systems

To enhance strategic thinking and actions to transform agrifood systems towards a sustainable, resilient and inclusive future, our regional office is engaging in a Regional Foresight Exercise (RFE). It will contribute 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. It builds on the FAO global strategic foresight exercise and its findings, which are contained in the recent FAO flagship report  The future of food and agriculture – Drivers and triggers for transformation.

The first phase of the RFE for the region began in September of 2023 with a hybrid Inception workshop organized in Cairo. Based on the outcome of this workshop, a draft Regional Foresight Report was developed. The regional office held a consultation with regional experts on 7 December with the goal of presenting and seeking validation of the work done so far and getting further feedback and insights to enrich the RFE Report as the team moves forward with the first phase of the exercise. During the expert consultations, participants discussed, among others, the regional drivers of food insecurity, political economy challenges, and the triggers and government policies that can set regional countries on pathways towards sustainable, resilient, and inclusive agrifood systems.

The output of this process will be a Regional Foresight Report that can guide regional governments in their efforts to transform agrifood systems in the region. “The regional foresight exercise will inform national development strategies on how to build resilient and sustainable agrifood systems in the Near East and North Africa region”, said AbdulHakim Elwaer, FAO Assistant Director-General. “The findings of the Regional Foresight Report 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”, he further continued.

The exercise will enable the diagnosing of regional-specific bottlenecks that prevent the transformation of agrifood systems, deeper learning of trends and impacts of specific regional drivers, drawing more detailed regional scenarios, deciphering how to trigger transformation at the regional level, and arrive at feasible and efficient government policies.