ABioSA worked with partners to ensure the success of the 2nd African Biotrade Festival (ABF) in Johannesburg in September 2025, building on the first ABF in 2023.

ABF is a vibrant marketplace attended by investors, researchers, buyers and innovators from the food, fragrance, flavours, ingredients and cosmetics sectors, biotrade producers, suppliers and communities. It serves as a multi-stakeholder platform to explore action-orientated solutions to overcome market barriers through brokering knowledge flows between biotrade actors.

The 2025 festival was hosted by South Africa’s Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, and through the BioPANZA initiative with the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (the dtic) and the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI).

The ABF and its collaborator Organic & Natural Products Expo Africa had 125 South African and 91 regional or African exhibitors. Sixty small biotrade businesses were supported by the ABF organisers together with ABioSA and its partners, twice as many as 2023.

The event attracted 4,219 verified visitors and featured more than 200 exhibitors from more than 10 countries, including South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Namibia, Ghana, Mauritius, China and the US.

One of the highlights of the event was the signing of a landmark ABS agreement between Traditional Knowledge Holders and industry partners in the Honeybush sector.

This follows the historic signing of an ABS agreement between the Buchu Association, the SA government represented by DFFE, the National Khoi Council and the South African San Council.

Feedback on ABF from the biotrade sector, government and small businesses has been overwhelmingly positive and there is broad support for the event to be sustained and expanded.
ABF reports, video and presentations can be viewed and downloaded at xxx