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East Africa: Alliances Sought for Comesa Markets
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The East African (Nairobi)
12 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
Wilfred Edwin
Nairobi
East and Southern African countries are to build regional cross-border alliances to strengthen innovative market institutions and link food insecure smallholder farmers with national and regional markets for staple foods.
The project, called Alliance for Commodity Trade in Eastern and Southern Africa (Actesa), will capitalise on the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (Caadp), see story alongside, will make market institutions for smallholders and traders more vibrant.
The main goal of Caadp is to help African countries achieve higher economic growth through agriculture-led development.
This form of development is one that eliminates hunger, reduces poverty and food insecurity and enables expansion of exports.
A team designing the work programme for Actesa met in Lusaka at the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (Comesa) Secretariat last month under the term leadership of Dr James Nyoro, a Kenyan consultant.
The team comprises multi-disciplinary members from USAid East Africa, the East African Grain Association, the World Food Programme and two consultants from the US and Malawi who have already begun designing the work programme.
Programme activities will concentrate on three target areas in the most promising countries that include a large number of vulnerable populations that have the potential to produce surplus staple food for the region.
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The Comesa secretariat said the target beneficiaries from these areas are farming communities in selected areas that are drought prone or emerging from conflicts and are receiving support from food aid agencies to improve their production systems.
Top on the list of crops to be covered are maize, bananas, cassava and beans.
The team will look at diversification as a way to counter rising food prices.
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