Francis Ayieko, Special Correspondent
21 April 2008
Nairobi — A meeting of agricultural experts, policymakers and representatives from Africa and the international community, to be held in Lusaka, Zambia from April 29-30, will culminate in the signing of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) by Zambia.
Established in July 2003, the programme, an initiative of the African Union and the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), is the highest policy level framework for the development of agriculture in Africa.
The purpose of the CAADP roundtable, to be hosted by the Zambian government and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, is to reach consensus among key stakeholders on Zambia's agricultural development agenda, forge the necessary partnerships to implement it and secure commitments and resources from partners to make the necessary investments.
According to a statement from the Comesa secretariat in Zambia, Zambian stakeholders under the auspices of the Ministry of Agriculture and Co-operatives and the Agricultural Consultative Forum met on March 27, 2008 to agree on priority programmes "that will bring the required higher growth in the agriculture sector."
Further, outgoing Comesa secretary-general, Erastus Mwencha, on April 3, met Zambian Agriculture minister Sarah Sayifwanda and discussed the agreement, which will be signed by the African Union, the Zambian Ministers for Agriculture and Finance, co-operating partners, Comesa and the private sector under the Zambia National Farmers Union and Agri-business Forum.
So far, Rwanda, also a Comesa member, is the only African country to have signed the agreement in March 2007. The Comesa secretariat has been mandated to implement the CAADP agenda in East and Southern Africa.
The programme's overall goal is to help African countries reach a higher path of economic growth through agriculture-led development, with the ultimate goal of eliminating hunger, reducing poverty and food insecurity and enabling expansion of exports.
Agricultural experts say that while the majority of the citizens of Comesa states derive their livelihood from agriculture, the sector's overall productivity is low.
The main challenges to enhanced agricultural development and competitiveness in Comesa, the experts point out, are market-related and technological obstacles and policy constraints that lead to low agricultural productivity, resulting in food insecurity.
The CAADP framework is a growth-oriented agricultural development agenda, aimed at increasing agriculture growth rates to six per cent per year to create the wealth needed for rural communities and households in Africa to prosper.
In order to ensure that Comesa's regional agricultural development programmes are CAADP-compliant and to assist member states to target the agreed objectives of reaching Millennium Development Goal of reducing hunger and poverty by half by the year 2015, African states have agreed to allocate at least 10 per cent of national budgets to agriculture to attain an annual agricultural sector growth of six per cent.
To achieve this goal, CAADP focuses its interventions in four key pillars.
The pillars are extending the area under sustainable land management and reliable water control systems; improving rural infrastructure and trade-related capacities for market access; increasing food supply, reducing hunger, improving responses to food emergency crises and improving agriculture research, technology dissemination and adoption.
Cross-cutting issues in the four pillars targeted for interventions include capacity strengthening for agribusiness; academic and professional training, and improving access to information for agricultural strategy formulation.
Mid last month, agriculture ministers from Comesa countries signed a declaration after a two-day meeting in Seychelles. It was the fifth such meeting and discussed how Comesa countries can consolidate regional economic integration through value addition, trade and food security.
The meeting declared that member states must pay particular attention to the escalating costs of farm inputs such as seeds, fertiliser and energy; the impending reduced access to food for the vulnerable population as a result of the rising fuel and food prices; increased use of food crops for biofuels; as well as the effect of climate change, with a view to finding sustainable solutions.
The meeting also asked member countries to effectively use the development of the agricultural sector, under the vision of the CAADP agenda, as a tool to reach the goal of reducing hunger and poverty by half by the year 2015.
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