**3.2 Emergence of the African Agricultural Leadership Institute (AALI)**

AALI was formed shortly after the Dakar 2 event, led by the departure of the IITA Director General after 11 years of service. AALI's Strategy is embedded in a vision of establishing a new paradigm in the leadership of African agricultural development, resulting in accelerated agricultural sector modernization. AALI's agenda consists of three primary objectives (1) Provides advisory services to African governments seeking to modernize their agriculture and better implement their rural development agendas; (2) Empower youth as agricultural producers, service providers, and processors and restore agriculture as an attractive career path; and (3) Transforms agriculture through private sector growth resulting in the introduction of new technologies, needed production inputs and a next generation of service providers and agro-processors [71]. Achieving this agenda requires an enabling environment that helps countries expand agricultural growth through higher productivity on existing farmland, encourages strategic alliances within the continent, and revives the capacity for agricultural research and development through innovative problem-solving. Success requires that AALI operate an efficient internal organizational structure that guides the emergent Country Food and Agriculture Delivery Compacts emerging from the Dakar 2 Feed Africa Summit to establish precedents that guide agricultural transformation. Two of its foremost Objectives related to propelling the Dakar 2 Summit process forward relate to supporting African governments to develop innovative delivery mechanisms that translate vision and intent into concrete actions and benefits and guide current and future African political leaders and civil servants to acquire the leadership skills required to mobilize rural communities and to achieve pressing rural development agendas more successfully.
