UN Summit in Addis Ababa: City in turmoil

From July 27 to 29, 2025, Addis Ababa will host the second stocktaking of the United Nations Food Systems Summit. This is a rare opportunity: four years after Rome 2021, the world is coming together to assess policy progress, push for financial commitments, and politicize hunger as a global issue of sovereignty, social justice, and climate.

An inauguration under high political tension

The opening ceremony, held on Monday, July 28, was attended by a host of key figures: Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu, IFAD President Alvaro Lario, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Kenyan President William Ruto, as well as other African leaders and representatives of civil society and the private sector. This type of gathering of personalities reinforces the idea that food is not just a technical issue, but a political and identity marker, as Abiy Ahmed reminded us, emphasizing that "food is memory, identity, national sovereignty, and survival."

In his address broadcast via video chat, Secretary-General António Guterres urged the transformation of food systems by making them more sustainable, resilient and accessible to all, a message reinforced by the objective of accelerating financing and collective commitments.

Measured progress and major challenges

Fragmented overall balance sheet

Four years after the inaugural 2021 Summit, member states are using the event to take stock of mixed results . While progress is being made in some digital innovations and climate-smart agricultural practices, gaps persist in ensuring equitable access to healthy food, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected areas. Experts highlight the gap between political ambition and concrete implementation: some countries are making progress, while others are floundering due to a lack of coordination, funding, or simply political will.

Land and local inspirations

The July 27 Action Day included field visits, including to the Melkassa agricultural center. There, local initiatives were highlighted: agricultural research, food processing by companies like Dina, where science and farming traditions blend to create models that can be exported to sub-Saharan Africa. Voices like that of Negasa Deressa, director of the Melkassa site, insisted on coherent cooperation centered on indigenous knowledge combined with modern technologies.

Towards a renewed narrative of food sovereignty

High-level feedback and dialogue

The summit platform has implemented a hybrid system: high-level plenary sessions, ministerial roundtables, expert panels, funding sessions, and presentations of NGO and SME projects. The idea: to create shared narratives, narratives where public policy, the private sector, and civil society converge.

The discussions were fueled by a clear principle: achieving the SDGs by 2030 requires a transformation of food systems at every national, regional, and local level. Public and private financing, investments in sustainable agriculture, and the empowerment of youth and indigenous knowledge are among the accelerators on the table.

Clearly, the summit, far from being consensual, introduced tensions: transformation versus immediate food security, technological innovation versus peasant traditions, private sector lobbying versus social regulation... The opening set the tone: a political nexus more than a simple technical forum. And already, there are murmurs of criticism about a lack of concrete commitment from rich countries, or a timidity of the SDGs on the structural justice of the global food model.

A demanding African story: between innovative capacity and skepticism

Ethiopia and Italy, as co-hosts, intend to make the Summit a testament to African leadership. The continent must play a leading role, no longer a spectator of global policies. Yet skepticism remains: how can grand declarations be transformed into national policies and local funding? How can countries with limited budgets be involved? This second Summit attempts to answer these questions. The challenge is twofold: to unite a global vision and activate real, localized mechanisms.