The 11th African Potato Association (APA) Conference was held in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, on Monday. At the opening ceremony, the Potato Organization called on African countries to increase potato and sweet potato cultivation to achieve sustainable development of Africa's food nutrition system.

The conference was organized by the International Potato Center with the African Potato Association and the Rwandan Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources. Oscar Ortiz, deputy director of the International Potato Center, said potatoes and sweet potatoes have strong adaptability to climate change, providing new options for resource-poor countries. Large-scale cultivation of potatoes and sweet potatoes can improve the quality of people's diet, increase agricultural productivity and agricultural income.

Romain Cools, Vice President of the World Potato Congress, said that potatoes not only provide energy and vitamins for people, but also provide jobs through trade and processing industries.

According to Geraldine Mukeshimana, Minister of Agriculture of Rwanda, the average unit yield of potatoes and sweet potatoes in Rwanda is 10 tons per hectare and 7 tons per hectare, respectively, and there are 101 fully functional distribution centers in the main potato producing areas.

More than 200 researchers, government officials and project partners from 20 African countries attended the meeting. The theme of the four-day event is "leveraging potatoes and sweet potatoes to build a sustainable nutritional food system".

According to the World Health Organization, the number of undernourished people in sub-Saharan Africa has increased from 181 million in 2010 to 222 million in 2016