Below are some of the most salient outcomes of the regional Symposium, which itself was a follow up to the International Symposium on Agroecology for Food Security and Nutrition in Rome, held in September 2014. Leading up to this regional Symposium, the Malian National Coordination of Smallholder Organisations (CNOP) and its global allies organised the International Forum on Agroecology at the Nyéléni Centre in February 2015. This was an opportunity for social movements from around the world to discuss issues relating to food sovereignty and agroecology. The meeting in Mali produced a declaration which set out the smallholder vision of agroecology, which is an approach driven by food producers and a political tool that ‘requires us to challenge and transform structures of power in society’. The participants made strong recommendations for fundamental changes in both policy and practice to recognise and promote agroecology as a more just and fair alternative to the industrial, corporate-led model of food production. The 2015 Nyéléni forum was a milestone in the fight for food sovereignty and agroecology in Africa.

It is against this backdrop that producers, social movements, the private sector, universities, researchers, policy makers and community representatives met in Dakar for the African agroecology Symposium, instigated by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and hosted by the Senegalese government. On the 5th and 6th of November, 2015, they shared experiences which highlighted good practices in agroecology. The participants identified challenges that hinder the adoption of agroecology, proposed strategies to overcome them, and constructed a series of grounded recommendations about how best to strengthen and accelerate a transition to agroecology across Africa. This article provides a summary of the exchanges that took place and the outcomes designed to promote policies, practices and research that support the development of agroecology in Africa. This article will then end with a brief reflection on these outcomes and how they relate to the vision of agroecology presented in the Nyéléni declaration.