Future Agricultures Consortium

What is CAADP?

2009-12-03T02:58:00.000-08:00

The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) is the most ambitious and comprehensive agricultural reform effort ever undertaken in Africa. An initiative of the African Union (AU) and New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), it represents a fundamental shift toward development that is fully owned and led by African governments. It reflects African governments’ recognition of agriculture as central for the alleviation of poverty and hunger and hence for reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

An outcome of the 2003 Maputo Declaration CAADP is based on two overarching principles:
1. The pursuit of six percent average annual growth in the agricultural sector at national level; and,
2. Allocation of ten percent of national budgets to agriculture.

A framework rather than a roadmap, CAADP is composed of a set of key principles and targets for achieving these aims by 2015. It is at once flexible enough to accommodate the need for approaches toward poverty and hunger alleviation to be tailored to regional and national contexts, and broad enough to address policy and capacity issues across the entire agricultural sector and across the entire African continent.

CAADP’s vision of agriculture as a driver of poverty and hunger alleviation is underpinned by four pillars.

You can learn more about each pillar directly from the CAADP website by clicking on the respective links.
· Pillar 1: Extending the area under sustainable land management and reliable water control systems
· Pillar 2: Improving rural infrastructure and trade-related capacities for market access
· Pillar 3: Increasing food supply and reducing hunger
· Pillar 4: Agricultural research, technology dissemination and adoption

More about CAADP
NEPAD-CAADP website
NEPAD-CAADP calendar
CAADP Africa Forum
Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (by IFPRI)
UN support to AU/NEPAD’s CAADP

Day 1 continued

2009-12-03T02:55:00.000-08:00

Delegates stressed that subsistence agriculture should not be compromised in favor of commercialized agriculture. Also, the need for country context is critical when implementing CAADP.

Pillar leads:

1) Land and Water Management: Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the SAHEL(CILSS) and The University of Zambia

2) Market Access: Conference of Ministers of Agriculture of West and Central Africa (CMA/AOC).

3) Food Supply and Hunger: University of KwaZulu Natal - African Centre for Food Security and the Land and Water Management: Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the SAHEL(CILSS)

4) Agriculture Research: Forum for Agriculture Research in Africa (FARA)

All are compiling indicators, Pillar benchmarks and developing tools to help guide investment and CAADP implementation at a country level. In the context of this conference, the available tools to review vulnerability for social protection measures, like the Framework for African Food Security (FAFS), are available at http://www.caadp.net/library-pillar3-documents.php

Read about the CAADP Africa Forum here.

2009 CAADP Africa Forum

2009-12-03T02:44:00.000-08:00

The Bottom of the Pyramid: Agriculture Development for the Vulnerable.

On November 30 in Nairobi, more than 160 delegates from across Africa met for the fourth CAADP Africa Forum, organized by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) from 30 November-4 December 2009. The Forum’s theme is ‘The Bottom of the Pyramid: Agricultural Development for the Vulnerable’.

The forum opened with addresses from Kenya's Minister of Agriculture, Hon. William Ruto and Kenya's Permanent Secretary for agriculture, Hon. Romano Kiome who outlined five priorities for Kenya agriculture, largely focused on improving access and all requiring leadership, efficiency, and good governance; they are:
• inputs
• credit
• markets
• irrigation
• institutions

As the day continued, delegates had questions about the ongoing planning phase of CAADP and its added-value to national agriculture policies. As well, delegates discussed if CAADP could provide assistance at the national level and what are the windows of opportunity within CAADP for effective cooperation with the state, existing poverty strategy plans and initiatives with donors.

Nairobi hosts food security meeting

2009-12-01T04:10:00.000-08:00

By Lucas Barasa*

Nairobi, 2nd December 2009 - A major conference to help enhance food security in Africa and share lessons on best practices entered its third day in Nairobi Wednesday.

The Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) head Richard Mkandawire who spoke on behalf of the African Union Commission and New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) said the forum is a platform for sharing experiences and lessons from each other’s best practices in agriculture.

The lessons and ideas are to be used as an input into country-driven development of the agricultural and rural sector, he said.

The five day forum is under the theme The Bottom of the Pyramid: Agricultural Development for the Vulnerable.

“In spite of the positive socio-economic and political gains that have been recorded in the past 10 years, Africa remains a troubled continent. This is a continent where famine and diseases are widespread. A continent where 200 million people are undernourished and 33 million children are malnourished and go to sleep hungry every night,” Mr. Mkandawire said.

He warned that in absence of some real tangible emergency and long term measures-food prices are set to remain high for most African countries over the next couple of years.

The AU and NEPAD have been advocating for African agricultural capacity building, so that African countries can better develop their agricultural capacities.

Endorsed by the AU in 2003, CAADP is an Africa-led and Africa-owned NEPAD initiative and framework to rationalise and revitalise African agriculture for economic growth and lasting poverty reduction results.

“In this light, may I state that the African Union and NEPAD will play a lead role in ensuring that the knowledge generation centres, through the Regional Economic Communities, work very closely with the countries in enhancing and strengthening the national round table processes and we shall endeavour to mobilise the relevant resources to support this process,” Mr. Mkandawire said.

While opening the conference on Monday at Laico Regency Hotel, Agriculture minister William Ruto said five children were dying of hunger every five seconds worldwide.

“Globally, we have one billion hungry people, meaning one-sixth of all humanity is hungry and malnourished.

“This figure represents over 100 million more hungry people than in 2008 and out of these, five children die every 30 seconds. Beyond the numbers, this means horrible suffering for children, women, men, relatives, friends or neighbours. This is mankind’s tragic achievement in these modern days when our technology allows us to travel to the moon and to space stations,” the minister said.

In Africa, Mr Ruto said, 218 million people or 30 percent of population were suffering from chronic hunger and malnutrition.

*This article first appeared on The Nation Website http://www.nation.co.ke/ on December 2, 2009. Mr. Lucas Barasa is an active member of the CAADP Network of Journalists.

Best wishes,
CAADP Team

ReSAKSS conference

2009-11-23T23:21:00.000-08:00

The Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (ReSAKSS) Africa-wide conference, Agriculture-led Development for Africa: Exploring New Opportunities and Strategic Alternatives to Inform African Agricultural Development, Planning and Policy took place November 23-24, 2009 at the headquarters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

See conference pages here that include presentations and blog postings.

Quotes

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“CAADP is a strong articulation of Africa’s priorities. We want to work with GCARD for R4D – no need to change our priorities (already voiced in CAADP), but we need better coordination, more smallholder-oriented research, etc.” - meeting participant

E-CONSULTATIONS

2009-10-05T22:58:00.001-07:00

As part of the GCARD stakeholder engagement process, e-consultations were held. For Africa, there were more than 320 contributions from 65 countries (highest number of contributions were from: 1. Ghana, 2. Kenya, 3. Uganda, 4. Nigeria, 5. Ivory Coast). Prevalent feeling is that contributions were informed by actual field experience and local conditions.

Discussion subjects raised (commonly used words in brackets):
1. Knowledge (18%) (knowledge, information, science, innovation)
2. Resources (15%) (resource/s, soil, water, climate change)
3. Training (14%) (extension, dissemination, training, education)
4. Production (12%) (production/s, crops, food/s, productivity, fertilizer, seed, plant/s, water, vegetable, animal, fish)
5. Technologies (11%) (technology/ies, ICT)
6. Mechanisation (9%) (mechanization, machinery, tractors, waterset)
7. Indigenous Knowledge (8%) (indigenous (plant/knowledge), traditional)
8. Markets (6%) (market, agribusiness)
9. Partnerships (4%) (partnership, network, collaboration, interaction)
10. Policy (3%)
11. Infrastructure (<1%)

Participants were: researchers, scientists, lectures, farmers, civil society, youth and women, extension workers.

GCARD update

2009-10-05T22:57:00.001-07:00

Participants from GFAR also provided an overview of GCARD including its objectives:
• Ensure alignment of the research agenda with development needs of the resource-poor
• Advocate for a more effective financial support
• Facilitate dialogue between diverse stakeholders on innovation pathways
• Promote the integration of the international agricultural research systems with national systems.

A participant noted that GCARD is a very unique opportunity to input into a developing framework for Agriculture research.

Stakeholder engagement and the lead up to GCARD follows this plan (currently at stage 3):
1. Regional Reviews
2. E-Consultations (Round 1)
3. Regional face to face meetings
4. E-Consultations (Round 2)
5. GCARD Event
6. GCARD follow-up

To frame the consultations, GCARD is asking:
• What are the needs and priorities for agricultural research in delivering defined development impacts?
• What mechanisms and partnerships are required in innovation pathways turning research into development impacts at scale?
• What are the key blockages, barriers and bottlenecks that prevent research from benefiting the poor?
• How best should these be resolved and what enabling investments, policies and capacities are most needed?

Regional Review

2009-10-05T22:53:00.000-07:00

Uzo Mokwunye provided a summary of the Regional Review he conducted.

Sub-regional priorities:

ASARECA
- improve productivity of staples as well as commodities with a growing regional market

CORAF/WECARD
- promote joint investment in rice research and development
- increase investment in livestock improvement
- promote growth and development of root crops

SADC/FANR
- promote partnership and collaboration among NARs
- promote public/private partnerships
- promote capacity building
- mobilize resources to implement demand-driven research activities

Gaps:
- poor capacity for innovation
- lack of coordination between research and extension
- too much emphasis on challenges and little on opportunities
- perceived gaps in implementation of the four pillars
- little attention has been paid to undernourishment
- what happened to research on “processing”?

In setting the research agenda, we’ll need to maintain a commitment to responding to needs of the poor:
- poorest countries must emphasize increases in production
- priority must be given to agricultural development in places where significant productivity gains are possible
- put emphasis on staples and on smallholder farmers
- develop strategies that complement agricultural growth with social protection measures
- focus on meeting needs of domestic markets
- emphasize growth that ensures sustainable use of main production resources

Day One

2009-10-05T21:52:00.001-07:00

Sixty three participants are meeting at FARA’s new secretariat in Accra to review GCARD consultation efforts in Africa. Reflections in this blog are from David Hughes, Communications and Networking Officer for the Future Agricultures Consortium.

Day one saw an overview of Agricultural Research and Africa’s Development Agenda by Dr. Monty Jones.

Main points:
• The performance of agriculture is a major success factor for efforts to improve living standards in Africa & the world
• CAADP projects that Africa must maintain at least 6% agricultural production growth/yr to sustainably improve its food security
• The changes required to achieve CAADP and MDGs targets call for revolutionary vision, commitment, investment & action
• The investment and broad actions required are laid in CAADP and FAAP—for research, extension and adoption
• The mutual interests necessary to drive collaboration in agricultural science, capacity strengthening & infrastructural development exist.
• What is now needed is concrete action to harness the momentum of GCARD

Some expectations of participants for the meetings included:
1. Defining realistic priorities for agricultural research and describing clear action plans for R&D
2. Defining roles and responsibilities for research stakeholders
3. Identifying end-users, partnerships
4. Including non-research persons, stakeholders, local knowledge in research planning
5. Maintaining the aim of demand-driven R4D and transforming research outputs into national and concrete actions
6. Committing to a statement of issues, concerns
7. Including capacity building/strengthening in planning

Face-to-Face objectives

2009-10-03T06:24:00.001-07:00

Face-to-Face meetings at regional level will bring together key ARD actors in each region to identify regional ARD needs and priorities as well as mechanisms for improving ARD’s contribution to developmental impact in their region. The GCARD face-to-face consultation for Africa will take place from 5 to 7 October 2009 at the FARA Secretariat in Accra, Ghana. It will draw on the regional review and contributions gathered through the electronic consultation.

Africa Face-to-Face GCARD consultation

2009-10-03T05:53:00.000-07:00

In 2008, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) launched a Change Initiative to identify how best to address and help to meet anticipated global changes and challenges. The Change Initiative, in which GFAR is actively involved, has been implemented in different phases throughout 2009, building towards a new structure and renewed results-oriented research agenda.

The consultation in Africa culminates in a Face-to-Face meeting in Accra from 5-7 October.

The Furure Agricultures Consortium is supportive of this process and will post entries on this blog during the Face-to-Face consultative meeting in Accra from 5-7 October.