An official of the Confederation of Associations of Mozambique, Mr. Jose Filipe, has said that urbanisation can be used to develop agriculture in Africa.Filipe stated this on Tuesday at the official opening ceremony of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Network (FANRPAN) annual stakeholders dialogue in Maputo.

He said urbanisation could improve development in agriculture because it was accompanied by increasing demand on food, including processed food, as noticeable in major African cities.

Filipe noted that urban demand had triggered the creation of thousands of informal micro and small enterprises, especially by women, who had been able to adapt and diversify their offer and add value to the processing and the marketing of agricultural produce.

"The domestic markets and exports are major catalysts of economic development as they provide incentives for the production of more goods of better quality," he said.

He said African countries have paid less attention to intra-regional markets in spite of increasing difficulties for them to export their agricultural products because result of new barriers imposed by European countries.

"The most difficult constraints to regional trade are not the lack of physical infrastructure but persistence of a variety of barriers which can be subsumed as non trade barriers.

"The rhetoric of free flows and dissolving boundaries is countered by the intensifying reality of borders, divisions and violent strategies of exclusion," Filipe said. He, therefore, stressed the need for the development of the agricultural sector as a response to domestic trade and intra-regional export as an essential element of economic growth and pro-poor policies.

"The future of African agriculture and the extent to which it can play its full role depends on Africans themselves," he added.

Filipe called on participants to use the networking opportunities that FANRPAN offers, to build a vibrant stakeholders community so that agriculture could fully play its role in food and nutrition security and economic development of the continent. (NAN)