First-ever world banana conference

In October, for the first time, the world's banana experts will gather in Kenya for a conference dedicated to the African banana.

The conference will take place October 5-9th 2008 at the Leisure Lodge Resort in Mombasan Kenya. 

An Africa-based conference will focus on banana and plantain across Africa: lessons learnt and the way forward. There is an urgent need to target basic and applied research that connects to existing and emerging markets. This unique conference will be the first pan-African meeting to link research to markets in an African context. Results from this conference will change the way in which bananas are currently produced and marketed by providing a strategy to link state of the art research to new markets to stimulate trade.

The conference actively solicited and obtained input from all stakeholders - scientists, farmers, trade specialists, policy makers and the private sector – and serves as a unique forum to bring these together. Key priorities are:

· develop a strategy for the next decade to exploit banana research for African economic growth,

· strengthen research partnerships to overcome production bottlenecks,

· focus research on meeting the challenges of evolving production trends, emerging markets and trade networks.