On Africa’s Policy for Agricultural Transformation
By Saliu Bashiru
The Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Program (CAADP) is Africa’s Policy Framework for Agricultural Transformation, Wealth Creation, Food- Security and Nutrition, economic growth and prosperity for all.
In 2003, the African Union (AU) assembly of head of States and Government adopted the Maputo declaration on CAADP, setting broad targets of 6% annual growth in agricultural GDP and allocating 10% of public expenditure to agricultural sector.
Ten year later, June 2014 in Malabo (Equatorial Guinea) the head of States and Government adopted seven (7) commitments which translated to seven thematic areas with 47 indicators and 23 performance categories.
These commitments are: Re-commitment to CAADP principle and values; Enhancing investment finance in Agriculture; Ending hunger by 2025 and Reducing poverty by half by 2025
Others include boosting intra-africa trade in agricultural commodities and service; Enhancing resilience of livelihood and Mutual accountability to action and results.
In line with these commitments, a biennial review is agreed upon to monitor countries report and progress in achieving these set goals. The first review was in 2017 with minimum score of 3.94 to be on “track” and the second review was held in 2019 with minimum score of 6.66 to be on track.
Nigeria failed to be on track both in the first and second review, though with an encouraging performance of 5.18 from less than 3.94 in the previous review and this is measure at 52% performance which is much good for us.
Nigeria need to rededicate her commitments, generate time series data for effective monitoring and tracking purposes,conduct agricultural surveys, build capacity of critical stakeholder including CSOs and having a good synergy between MDAs and non state actors.
Moving Forward: Action aid Nigeria has been supporting Public Finance on Agriculture(PFA) in states like: Kogi, Kwara, Ondo, Delta,Bauchi, Ebonyi, Gombe and FCT more than seven states in the last 13 years, and now that the project has ended ,non state actors has identified key actions to ensure sustainability which are, but not limited to continued advocacy on budget analysis so that evident based report can be translated in to credible data that can be shared with CAADP non state actors (CNC)
There is also urgent need for peer review of annual budget committee groups and documentations through social media.
Saliu Bashiru
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