The world is being ushered into a new industrial future, which is set to change in a fundamental way, how people live daily. The Fourth Industrial Revolution will be fundamentally different from earlier industrial revolutions in its scope and complexity, as well as its scale. The rate, depth and breadth of the likely transformations promise to be breath-taking and disruptive to all industries everywhere, especially for their production systems, management as well as governance.  It is not clear how this future will look, but clues about what will shape winners or losers are emerging. Clearly innovation is critical, but so also is the constant restating of shared values that safeguard our common humanity. One thing is certain; the future will be like nothing the world has seen before. To make the most of it will require coordinated effort of all stakeholders, including the public and private sectors, academia and industry, as well as civil society.

Addressing transformation that is set to occur in the changing global landscape the 2^nd African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) conference was held in Nairobi from 18-20 November. This biennial event brought together the brightest minds from across Africa to foster dialogue on key development issues and how it can be addressed - in Africa for Africa. 

During the conference participants were exposed to the future challenges of teaching, learning and research in the fourth industrial revolution and had the opportunity to rub shoulders with a number of influential colleagues at other local, regional and international universities. The multifaceted and multidisciplinary nature of the conference made for interesting discussions from different vantage points that allowed critically exploring innovative solutions to address the big developmental challenges facing the globe.

In terms of food security challenges specifically, Prof Hettie Schönfeldt (Director of the ARUA Centre of Excellence for Food Security) hosted a workshop on digitalization and food security. During this workshop Prof Schönfeldt presented on “Challenges and opportunities for food security and health in rural Africa”. It was found that food based approaches are the most effective strategy to address malnutrition, including dietary diversification, improved food availability and affordability, nutrition sensitive agriculture and education. Other presentations at this workshop included;

• Big data and Agricultural Food Security - unexplored territory? Presented by Melissa van der Merwe, Marlene Labuschagne and Marion Delport from the University of Pretoria
• Building gender capacities in agricultural research for development: Lessons from the GREAT training model, presented by Brenda Boonabana from Makerere University
• The use of the Internet of Things (IoT) in agriculture presented by Ciira Maina from Dedan Kimathi University of Technology.

All the participants agreed that they returned to their home country with new teaching ideas and enthusiasm to explore new frontiers in food security research as a result of possibilities in the digital space.