IN a speech to delegates at the opening of the 12th Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Partnership Platform (PP), former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo remarked: “Africa has all that it needs to transform agriculture and be food secure.”
General Obasanjo says the continent’s greatest challenge is ensuring that transformation is strengthened by sufficient and innovative sources of funding.
He was speaking in Accra, Ghana, during the opening of a five-day meeting held recently under the theme ‘Innovative financing and renewed partnerships to accelerate CAADP implementation’.
The meeting discussed ways of accelerating the CAADP implementation to transform African agriculture in the face of emerging trends that have a direct bearing on Africa’s abilities to deliver results.
The 12th CAADP meeting also sought to highlight how best to speed up implementation through financial innovation and partnerships to deliver the Malabo Declaration and the Africa Union Agenda 2063.
Indeed, agriculture has been Africa’s critical driver of well-being for centuries, ensuring food security central to human health and catalysing the productivity needed for economic prosperity. As such, agriculture has become one of the most powerful engines for Africa’s economies.
Africa is poised to become the world’s next food exporter. Across the continent, there has been a notable renewed commitment from governments, non-governmental organisations and the private sector to move agriculture from a development challenge to a business opportunity.
As a result, most countries are moving to once again become net exporters, rather than importers of agricultural commodities.
“Agriculture has become among the most powerful engines for Africa’s economies, many of which have experienced rapid growth over the last decade. But we need to do more by getting more innovative and smarter by strategising how we can mobilise our own funds for our own development,” General Obasanjo said.
Despite witnessing some notable growth in innovation, Africa is still faced with the demanding task of mobilising adequate resources to fund its growth and the Africa Union’s transformation Agenda 2063.
“Africa has awakened to the fact that it must rely on its own financial resources for the sustainable development of its agricultural growth. To do this, Africa needs to speed up the development of its financial strategies with a view to sparking the transformation of its economy through agriculture,” says African Union commissioner for rural economy for agriculture, Rhoda Peace Tumusiime.
Mrs Tumusiime says for a continent that spends some US$40 billion each year on commercial food imports, the need for Africa to be innovative and more strategic in mobilising and accessing its own private financial resources for sustainable investment cannot be overemphasised.
“Public investments would play a crucial catalytic role to mobilise more private investments in the sector. A renewed partnership built on mutual accountability would help governments, the private sector, farmers and farmers’ organisations as well as development partners to deliver on results and impact for a transformed agriculture and reach the targets set by the CAADP Malabo and the sustainable development goals,” she said.
Truly, more must be done to break down the barriers that remain to scaling up innovation and investing in farmers on a large scale.
Zambia’s lead agribusiness, trade, commodity marketing and policy professional Cris Muyunda says to do this, the continent must form new linkages and better align their visions at country level and implement innovative approaches to boost agricultural production.
He said Africa also needs to increase its supply inputs such as seeds, fertiliser, and water, and outputs including storage, processing and distribution facilities, and access to markets.
“Innovative financing is one of the most promising solutions to respond to the development needs of Africa, provide additional funds by exploiting an unexplored potential. This includes the mobilisation of non-traditional means to assemble funds for development. It thus provides a response to the defects and the decline in traditional official development assistance,” Dr Muyunda said.
But all hope is not lost, Africa still has great potential to transform its economy through agriculture.
New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and CAADP co-ordinating agency senior advisor Abraham Sarfo, says Africa must come up with innovative financial products and set up effective national and regional financial institutions and services in order to generate enough funding to finance its agriculture agenda.
Mr Sarfo says to finance its development priorities, Africa must develop a financing framework that prioritises the needs for smallholder farmers.
He said many smallholder farmers, who form the backbone of Africa’s agriculture sector, remain trapped in poverty without access to financing and other tools to increase their productivity and profitability.
He said peasants still lack access to better seeds, healthy soils, profitable markets, storage and transport, and supporting policies to transform agriculture and drive sustainable economic growth in rural areas.
“Current policy, financing and investment patterns are not delivering the future we want. There are enormous unmet financing needs for sustainable development. It is time Africa realised that traditional sources of development finance, such as official development assistance and foreign direct investment, which have buoyed the continent’s development efforts over the years, keep reducing. Such a situation calls for innovation,” Mr Sarfo said.
According to NEPAD statistics, African countries raise more than US$527.3 billion annually from domestic taxes, compared to US$73.7 billion received in private flows and US$51.4 billion in official development assistance.
Globally, Africa is the only region which faces ongoing challenges to improve agricultural productivity, due to under-investment, poor infrastructure, insecure land tenure, unfavourable price policies and weak institutions.
However, agriculture has huge potential in making unused land arable, using untapped water resources, improving yields, expanding local value chains and contributing to meeting Africa’s and the world’s increasing demand for food.
Despite Africa’s economic potential in the agriculture sector, the structure of many economies has changed very little. Yet agriculture has been noted as one of the sectors destined to transform Africa’s economy.
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