By Jimoh Babatunde

When African leaders endorsed the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) as a New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) program in July 2003, the overall goal was to  “Help African countries reach a higher path of economic growth through agriculture- led development, which eliminates hunger, reduces poverty and food insecurity, and enables expansion of exports.”

Mr. Emmanuel Eniaiyeju, Focal person of Nigeria Ministry of Agriculture in a chat with Janet Edeme, Head of Division, Rural Economy, AUC during the leadership retreat on Operationalizing the Malabo Declaration organised by AU/NEPAD in Nairobi, Kenya.

So, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) is an African-led agenda designed to guide Africa’s agricultural transformation for sustained food security and socio-economic growth.

Implementing  CAADP has over the last decade enabled countries to address some of the key transformational issues in agricultural development in the continent, like Martin Bwalya said recently that the original thinking of CAADP  was not lack of action on the part of the African leaders, but lack of tangible results  in what they were doing in growing agriculture.

It was the issue of  achieving tangible results that led to the 2014 Malabo Declaration which is a commitment adopted by AU Heads of State and Government to provide effective leadership for the achievement of specific goals by the year 2025, including ending hunger, tripling intra-African trade in agricultural goods and services, enhancing resilience of livelihoods and production systems, and ensuring that agriculture contributes significantly to poverty reduction.

To meet these goals, African leaders re-affirmed their commitment to the CAADP process and agreed to enhance investment finance and to a biennial tracking of progress and reporting mechanism as part of the mutual accountability commitment.

Specifically, the Malabo Declaration known as the Accelerated Agricultural Growth  and Transformation Goals 2025 outlines seven commitments that are geared towards fostering agricultural growth and transformation.

In other to to take a critical look at the issues raised in the Malabo Declaration, a leadership retreat on operationalising the Malabo Declaration on Accelerated African Agricultural Growth and Transformation (3AGT) was convened by the African Union Commission in collaboration with the NEPAD Agency in Nairobi, Kenya  last week.

The Leadership Retreat brought together over 100 participants – Permanent Secretaries and CAADP Focal persons of Ministries of Agriculture, Rural Development, Livestock and Aquaculture, Regional Economic Communities and Partners. Speaking at the opening ceremony,  Rebecca Wahome, CAADP Focal Person for Kenya in the Ministry of Agriculture, said the importance of operationalising the Malabo Declaration for transformation of African agriculture for shared prosperity cannot be overemphasised.

Wahome  noted that agriculture is the backbone of Kenya’s economy, as well as many other African countries,  adding that that informed why it is one of the pillars of the country’s  development blueprint known as Vision 2030.

Martin Bwalya, NEPAD Agency’s Head of Programme Development, speaking on behalf of the NEPAD CEO, Dr. Ibrahim Mayaki, noted that Malabo Declaration has brought to the core issue of delivering results. Sustaining the CAADP momentum build up over the last ten years will only be sustained by demonstrating results and actual impact of agricultural transformation on peoples’ livelihoods and national economic growth.

In emphasing implementation and delivery of results, Malabo Declaration also underscores the critical role the national leadership – technical and political, have to play in driving implementation COUNTRY ACTION. The Permanent/Principal Secretaries – as custodians of Government Policy and drivers for implementation support, are critical lead players in making the COUNTRY ACTION that Malabo demands.

Also speaking at the opening,  Dr. Abebe Haile Gabriel, AUC Director for the Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture empahsised the importance of country ownership and leadership in realising the goals of the Malabo commitments.

The aspirations in the Malabo Declaration underscore CAADP implementation as a national responsibility. It is therefore critical that Heads of Ministries through the Permanent Secretaries as custodians of government policies and national development strategies and plans, including the National Agriculture and Food Security Investment Plans, fully embrace and internalise the responsibilities for driving the CAADP agenda.

Dr Abebe noted  that making deliberate and informed actions to bring about desired changes and development is actually ‘in our hands’ and urged leaders to steer away from rhetoric on the importance of agriculture by actual demonstration of its importance through increasing investments in the sector that will help realise attainment of the goals in the Malabo commitments.

He  said despite putting agriculture in the front burner in the last decade through CAADP by African leaders, that the sector has not attracted good financing.

Dr Abebe described the situation as one of the paradoxes of Africa which can only be solved through the Malabo Declaration. “We need investment in agriculture, so it is not out of humanitarian concern that we should raise the call for agriculture financing, but because of the multiplying effects.” Dr Abebe said

Maurice Lorka, one of the facilitators at the retreat, noted that Malabo Declaration is all about commitment on mutual accountability through CAADP Results Framework which is earmarked as  the tool that will be used in tracking, monitoring and reporting on the progress in meeting the Malabo commitments.

“The CAADP Results Framework is an integral part of the AU Agenda and defines the agricultural ‘space’ in the Agenda. It indicates the level and rate of agricultural performance and the policy, strategy and capacity development actions that are required for the sector to contribute to achieving the Agenda goals.”

He added that the Framework is particularly important for the continent’s broad-based economic growth and inclusive development aspirations. Lorka disclosed that countries have put in place monitoring system in Ministries of Agriculture that will be in charge of data collections, “from data collections there will be analysis and then country reports which go through reviews.” Data aggregation will lead to the regional and continental report, Lorka said the basic thing to be looked at at the country level will be specifics like fisheries, crops with the Permanent  Secretaries playing a lead role in the technical specifics.

While a participant from Tanzania called on African Union Commission to look into assisting countries in the reporting of data as it is capital intensive, Augustin Wambo that over the last ten years of when CAADP  was moved in Maputo that there has been different financing options to support the Maputo Declaration, “we have realised that the private sector have moved into financing agriculture, though not enough has been done.”

He explained that when CAADP started  that they realized large short fall in finance with many donors coming in with Trust Fund, “however, this funding comes to an end this year and if nothing is done , we might  find ourselves not being able to fund CAADP at the countries level.”

Speaking on the volumes and types of financing needed to deliver on the goals set in the Malabo Declaration, Wambo, the Head of CAADP- NEPAD, said there is need to use result based approach planning , so that every penny spent must be accounted for. “We can only achieve this by evidence base approach in our projects.”

He also added that there is need to agree on the nature of the financing as proper definition of funding is equally needed , “where we channel the financing is important as there is need  financing that will impact agriculture growth.” While noting that financing has stagnated in agriculture for some time now, Wambo said if the continent wants to make progress in terms of agriculture financing   that there is need to track everything with data collections.

He said countries must take lead in ensuring that 10% of allocation to agriculture as raised in the Maputo Declaration is wisely used to trigger more private investment in agriculture, adding that the private sectors should occupy its natural space in agriculture transformation in Africa.

Wambo said he is happy today that many countries are no longer seeing CAADP as a money making venture as they are now asking questions on how to access effective tools  and instruments to leapfrog their agriculture. Many of the participants at the break out session agreed that there is need for African countries to invest at least 10% of their budget into agriculture and should stop begging countries  for donation as they can effectively fund agriculture.