Beyond the congress hall: Will Kenya 2026 leave a lasting potato legacy?

The 2026 World Potato Congress will be historic. Its real value will be measured by what remains in farmers’ fields after the delegates leave.

By Lukie Pieterse, Editor/Publisher of Potato News Today

On 26 October, people whose working lives revolve around the potato will gather in Naivasha, Kenya, for the 13th World Potato Congress.

They will arrive from commercial farms, research institutes, seed companies, processing plants, machinery manufacturers, government departments and development organisations. By mid-September, participants from 62 countries had registered. Organisers expect more than 1,000 delegates during the five-day programme.

Those figures are impressive. The location matters more.

For an industry that regularly speaks about food security, climate adaptation and inclusive growth, bringing its largest global gathering to Kenya is both a milestone and a test.

It is a milestone because African scientists, growers and businesses have long contributed to potato development without always occupying an equal place in global industry discussions.

It is a test because holding a congress in Africa is not the same as allowing African priorities to shape it.

When the speeches end, the meaningful questions will be practical. Did the event improve access to planting material, knowledge, finance and markets? Were technologies examined at the scale at which most farmers must use them? Did local researchers leave with stronger partnerships and greater influence—or simply more international contacts?

In other words, did the potato world merely visit Africa, or did it listen?

The address changes the conversation

The official theme is “Global Potato Partnership for Enhanced Food Systems, Nutrition Security and Trade.” It is broad enough to accommodate almost every major issue confronting the crop.

The programme includes variety development, seed systems, pests and diseases, post-harvest management, value addition, mechanisation, climate-smart production, data, nutrition, trade and private investment. Women, young people and smaller enterprises are also explicitly included.

These subjects are relevant in every potato-producing region, but their meaning changes with location.

A discussion about mechanisation sounds different on a large irrigated operation in North America than it does on a fragmented highland farm. A new variety may be attractive to a European processor yet unsuitable for a Kenyan market that values different cooking characteristics. A digital advisory tool may perform well in a research trial but offer little value where connectivity, local-language support or agronomic follow-up is weak.

Kenya therefore provides more than scenery for an international meeting. It creates an opportunity to examine whether global solutions remain convincing when cost, scale, serviceability and risk are brought into the same conversation.

That scrutiny is valuable beyond Africa. Farmers everywhere are being asked to produce more reliably while managing expensive inputs, unpredictable weather, stricter environmental requirements and increasingly concentrated markets.

Technology that cannot survive those pressures is not ready, regardless of where it was developed.

Seed remains the unavoidable starting point

Several congress workshops will examine rooted apical cuttings, aeroponics and hybrid true potato seed. All three reflect the continuing search for faster and more affordable ways to move healthy planting material through the system.

The attraction is clear. Conventional seed-tuber multiplication is slow and expensive. Tubers are bulky to transport and store, and diseases can accumulate when farmers repeatedly replant material without effective quality control.

These problems are not confined to Africa, but they are especially visible where formal seed networks reach only part of the farming population.

New approaches may help. Rooted cuttings can increase multiplication rates and enable specialised producers to generate minitubers closer to farming areas. Aeroponic systems can produce large numbers of early-generation tubers under controlled conditions. Hybrid true potato seed offers the prospect of distributing far smaller volumes of planting material than conventional seed tubers require.

None is a complete seed system by itself.

A rooted cutting must still be hardened, transported, planted and managed correctly. An aeroponic facility needs dependable power, water, sanitation and technical support. True seed must deliver uniform crops, acceptable tubers and predictable performance under commercial conditions.

Farmers also need confidence that the additional cost will be recovered through yield, quality or market access.

The most useful congress discussion will therefore move beyond multiplication ratios and laboratory potential. It will ask who owns the facilities, how quality is verified, who carries establishment risk and whether planting material will reach farmers at the right time and at an affordable price.

Seed innovation matters only when it ends with a farmer receiving material worth planting.

The field day may be the real congress

On 29 October, delegates will travel to FreshCrop at Mau Narok for the congress field day. Organisers expect more than 1,500 farmers and international participants.

There will be demonstration plots, varieties, crop-protection and nutrition programmes, seed technologies, machinery and precision-agriculture tools. For many companies and researchers, this will be the moment when polished presentations meet soil, weather and farmer questioning.

That exchange deserves to be taken seriously.

A grower examining a planter may be less interested in its theoretical field capacity than in whether it can operate on small or irregular fields. Questions about spare parts, repair skills, finance and tractor requirements may decide more than the machine’s technical specification.

The same applies to crop-protection programmes. A treatment may control late blight effectively, but can it be obtained consistently? Is the application schedule realistic? Does it require equipment the farmer does not own? What happens when rain disrupts the programme or a counterfeit product enters the supply chain?

Demonstration days sometimes become exhibitions in which visitors are shown successful plots without being told enough about cost, failed treatments or the management required to achieve the result.

The better approach is a working conversation. Farmers should be able to compare plots, question assumptions and explain which parts of a proposed system would fail on their own farms.

That knowledge is not resistance to innovation. It is part of innovation.

Production without a market is not progress

Improved seed and agronomy can raise output, but greater production does not automatically create greater prosperity.

A grower who harvests more potatoes into an oversupplied market may simply face a lower price. A processing variety has limited value without a buyer, suitable storage and an agreed quality specification. Mechanisation can reduce labour pressure but create debt if machinery is poorly matched to farm size or seasonal utilisation.

The congress programme recognises trade, processing and private investment alongside production. That is important because many of the potato industry’s constraints occur between the field and the consumer.

Poor coordination can leave processors short of suitable raw material while farmers struggle to sell a surplus. Weak storage and handling can destroy value already created in the field. Unclear contracts transfer risk to the party least able to absorb it.

A serious partnership should bring growers, traders, processors and financiers into the same discussion before production targets are set.

It should also recognise the diversity of potato markets. Not every production system needs to be reorganised around large-scale processing. Fresh markets, local traders, restaurants, street food businesses and household consumption remain economically and nutritionally important.

The objective should not be to replace one market structure with another. It should be to give farmers clearer choices and a fairer chance of producing for the market they have chosen.

A legacy cannot be measured in photographs

The congress has launched a youth and 4K Club legacy programme involving 40 participants from Nairobi and Nakuru counties.

Ten school demonstration plots are intended to provide practical experience in land preparation, seed, soil health, integrated pest management, record-keeping and good agricultural practice. All 40 participants are expected to attend the field day, while selected young people will participate in the main congress.

It is a modest programme beside the scale of youth unemployment and agricultural renewal required across the continent. That does not make it insignificant.

A demonstration plot can change how a young person sees agriculture. Meeting a breeder, machinery engineer, seed grower or processor can reveal careers that are not visible from the classroom. Learning to calculate production costs may be as valuable as learning how to control a disease.

The harder question is what happens afterwards.

Youth engagement is often treated as an event: participants receive shirts, pose beside a crop and appear in a report. Genuine engagement requires a path beyond the photograph—mentorship, further training, access to land or equipment, work experience and opportunities to build businesses.

The programme will deserve to be called a legacy if participants are still receiving support when the congress is no longer in Kenya.

Partnership must include the power to disagree

International collaboration can bring finance, germplasm, equipment and specialist knowledge into places where they are badly needed. It can also reproduce an old pattern in which priorities are decided elsewhere, local organisations provide access and data, and the most valuable benefits travel outward.

The difference lies in who helps frame the question.

African researchers should not be confined to validating products developed for other markets. Growers should not appear only at the adoption stage, after the technology and business model have already been chosen. Local companies should have opportunities to manufacture, adapt, distribute and service what is introduced.

Partnership also requires room for disagreement.

A Kenyan agronomist may conclude that a fashionable technology is not the best use of limited investment. A farmer may prefer a lower-yielding variety because it stores better or sells more reliably. A local seed enterprise may need a different quality-assurance route from one designed for a mature, capital-intensive industry.

Those views should be regarded as evidence, not obstacles.

The potato industry has no shortage of technologies looking for markets. What it needs are solutions built around clearly understood problems.

What the rest of the world can learn

It would be a mistake to frame the congress as a one-way transfer of expertise from established potato industries to an emerging African sector.

Production systems operating with limited capital often become skilled at stretching seed, labour, water and machinery. Informal networks can move information and planting material rapidly, even if they also create plant-health risks. Farmers working in highly variable environments understand that resilience may matter more than record yield.

These experiences are increasingly relevant elsewhere.

Growers in wealthier countries are also confronting restricted margins, labour shortages, expensive machinery, water pressure and greater production risk. They may find that some of the most useful ideas in Kenya concern affordability, cooperation, repairability and making better use of what is already available.

Global learning should travel in more than one direction.

The measure of Naivasha

The organisers are establishing international working groups intended to continue between congresses. Their subjects include marketing, sustainability, research and emerging seed technologies.

That continuing structure could prove more important than the meeting itself, provided it produces visible work.

After Naivasha, the industry should be able to ask what changed. Were new seed partnerships established? Did research programmes gain African leadership? Were companies connected with local distributors and technicians? Did farmers receive follow-up support after the field demonstrations? Were young participants given routes into training or employment?

Not every outcome will be immediate, and no congress can repair an entire production system in five days. But an international gathering should create more than goodwill.

For me, the importance of the 2026 World Potato Congress lies in the possibility that it changes who is heard when the global industry decides what progress looks like.

If success is measured only by registrations, presentations and business cards exchanged, the event will have been well attended.

If farmers gain better planting material, researchers gain greater influence, young people see a future in the sector and businesses build relationships suited to African conditions, it will have achieved something more lasting.