Executive summary
Background
African Ministers of Agriculture met at FAO Headquarters in Rome, Italy on 9th June 2002 under the auspices of the FAO Regional Conference for Africa, which held the special follow-up session meeting to review an earlier draft of this document—the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP)—prepared by FAO in co-operation with the NEPAD Steering Committee. Extracts from the report of their meeting are produced as Annex 1. It can be seen that the Conference welcomed and endorsed the CAADP and agreed on the need to quickly operationalise it; it offered guidance to member governments on a wide range of aspects of operationalisation and action to revitalise African agriculture.
What follows is the full CAADP document after some adjustment to reflect some comments received on the version presented to the Ministers, including their desire to see research included as a pillar for action. Clearly, a programme on agriculture must remain living and open to continuing improvement and also be open to interpretation for each of Africa’s sub-regions in order to best address that continent’s diversity. This document therefore offers a broad frame of priorities from which more precise strategies and programmes can be derived for operationalisation.
The latest figures (for 1997-99) show that some 200 million people—or 28 percent of Africa’s population—are chronically hungry, compared to 173 million in 1990-92. While the proportion of the population facing hunger is dropping slightly, the absolute numbers are rising inexorably. During the 1990s, 30 countries had over 20 percent of their population undernourished and in 18 of these, over 35 percent of the population were chronically hungry. As of 2001, about 28 million needed emergency food and agricultural assistance. To reflect its particularly difficult situation, the World Food Programme—which accounts for two-fifths of international food aid—has spent US$12.5 billion (45 percent of its total investment since its establishment) in Africa and 43 percent in 2001.
In line with the rise in the number of hungry, there has been a progressive growth in food imports in the last years of the 20th century, with Africa spending an estimated US$18.7 billion in 2000 alone. At the same time, food aid gives evidence of considerable external dependency: 2000 Africa received 2.8 million tons of food aid, which is over a quarter of the world total. Imports of agricultural products have been rising faster than exports since the 1960s and Africa as a whole has been a net agricultural importing region since 1980. Agriculture accounts for about 20 percent of total merchandise exports from Africa, having declined from over 50 percent in the 1960s. For Africa as a whole, the agricultural sector accounts for about 60 percent of the total labour force, 20 percent of total merchandise exports and 17 percent of GDP.
Until the incidence of hunger is brought down and the import bill reduced by raising the output of farm products which the region can produce with comparative advantage, there is no way in which the high rates of economic growth to which NEPAD aspires can be attained. People suffering from hunger are marginalised within the economy, contributing little to output and still less to demand. Investing in reducing hunger is a moral imperative but it also makes economic sense. Agricultural-led development is fundamental to cutting hunger, reducing poverty (70 percent of which is in rural areas), generating economic growth, reducing the burden of food imports and opening the way to an expansion of exports.
Areas of primary action
As currently formulated, the proposed initiatives under the NEPAD Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) focus on investment into three “pillars” that can make the earliest difference to Africa’s agricultural crisis plus a long-term pillar for research and technology. The three fundamental mutually reinforcing pillars on which to base the immediate improvement of Africa’s agriculture, food security and trace and trade balance are:
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Extending the area under sustainable land management and reliable water control systems.
Reliance on irregular and unreliable rainfall for agricultural production is a major constraint on crop productivity and rain fed agriculture is also often unable to permit high-yield varieties of crops to achieve their full production potential. Accordingly, it is of concern that for Africa the percentage of arable land that is irrigated is 7 percent (barely 3.7 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa) while the corresponding percentages for South America, East and South-East Asia and South Asia are 10 percent, 29 percent and 41 percent respectively. Furthermore, in Africa 16 percent of all soils are classified as having low nutrient reserves while in Asia the equivalent figure is only 4 percent; moreover, fertiliser productivity (expressed in terms of maize yield response) in Africa is estimated at some 36 percent lower than in Asia and 92 percent lower that in developed countries. Building up soil fertility and the moisture holding capacity of control, will not only provide farmers with opportunities to raise output on a sustainable basis but will also contribute to the reliability of food supplies.
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Improving rural infrastructure and trade-related capacities for market access.
Improvements in roads, storage, markets, packaging and handling systems, and input supply networks, are vital to raising the competitiveness of local production vis-Р°-vis imports and in exporting markets. Investment in these areas will stimulate the volume of production and trade, thereby assisting to generate an appropriate rate of return on needed investments in ports and airport facilities. In general, Africa urgently needs infrastructure improvements for development given that it faces the longest distances to the nearest large markets and a fifth of its population is landlocked. Its rail freight is under 2 percent of the world total, the marine freight capacity is 11 percent (much being foreign owned but registered for convenience in Africa), and air freight is less than 1 percent; similarly, its power generation capacity per capita is less than half of that in either Asia or Latin America. In parallel with improvements in infrastructure within Africa, adjustments are needed in the promotion and support (including subsidy) policies of developed countries. Exporting countries within the region need to raise their capacity to participate in trade negotiations and to meet the increasingly stringent quality requirements of world trade.
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Increasing food supply and reducing hunger.
Africa currently lags behind all other regions in terms of farm productivity levels with depressed crop and livestock yields, and limited use of irrigation and other inputs. By accessing improved technology—much of which is simple and relatively low in cost—small farmers can play a major role in both increasing food availability close to where it is most needed, raising rural incomes, and expanding employment opportunities and contributing to a growth in exports. This requires improved farm support services, pilot projects targeted at poor communities and a supportive policy environment.
A sub-component of this pillar is for investment to respond to the growing frequency and severity of disasters and emergencies calls for some attention to rapid humanitarian interventions followed by rehabilitation before normal development can resume. IFAD recently observed that in addition to natural disasters, over 50 countries were facing or had recently undergone civil or cross-border conflicts, including some 20 poorest countries. As a result, emergency relief is an increasing share of development aid; IFAD also noted a troubling gap in the transition from relief to development—hence a need for corrective action. Furthermore, achieving an immediate impact on hunger also requires that the production-related investments be complemented by targeted safety nets. Failure to attend to unpredictable needs and to providing safety nets can easily derail long-term development. However, the actuarial basis for dimensioning investment is too weak. For lack of better information, therefore, Africa at this stage needs to at least provide some nominal resource: a figure starting at some US$3 billion annually is proposed, to decline progressively to US$2 billion annually by 2015. Together the “investment” in safety nets and humanitarian/emergency food and agriculture would require some US$34.5 billion between 2002 and 2015.
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Agricultural research, technology dissemination and adoption,
the long term pillar, aims at achieving accelerated gains in productivity and will require: (a) enhanced rate of adoption for the most promising available technologies so as to support immediate improvement of African production by way of linking, more efficiently, research and extension systems to producers; (b) technology delivery systems that quickly bring innovations to farmers and agribusinesses so making increased adoption possible, notably through an appropriate use of new information and communication technologies; (c) renewing the ability of agricultural research systems to efficiently and effectively generate and adapt to Africa new knowledge and technologies, including biotechnology, needed to increase output and productivity while conserving the environment; and (d) mechanisms that reduce the costs and risks of adopting new technologies.
Pillar No 3: Increasing Food Supply and Reducing Hunger
For long, hunger has remained widespread in Africa. Despite gains in some countries, the threat of hunger remains a major peril for far too many people, with many adverse consequences for health and productivity of the population, reinforcing poverty. In Africa as elsewhere, the poorest and the most hungry tend to be one and the same people, living on the margin of survival and highly vulnerable to any shock. There is no doubt that eventually Africa will develop a diversified agricultural sector with commercial as well as smallholder farming. In the short-term, however, the need is for an immediate impact on the livelihoods and food security of the rural poor through raising their own production. Chapter 4 presents approaches to making an immediate impact on farmers’ livelihoods through agriculture. It covers two things: (a) the need for Africa to deal with food security in the short-term perspective of disaster-induced food and agricultural emergencies; and (b) food security through enhancement of production.
Africa can itself do much to attain a higher level of food security but there is need for partnerships with other developing as well as industrialised countries and the multilateral system. Within countries, successful action requires partnerships among communities, governments and the private sector.
Emergency-related food security
Far too often, there is need for preparedness in Africa in the context of emergency-related food security. The number, scale and intensity of emergencies in Africa have all been increasing due to both natural disasters (especially droughts and floods) and human-caused calamities including civil strife and conflict. Wars and related factors have become the single most serious cause of food insecurity in much of the region.
Large numbers of Africans are displaced within or outside national borders by wars and productive lands are frequently flooded or rendered barren by drought; such extreme events can reverse overnight long-term agricultural development gains. Therefore, in looking at Africa’s immediate needs for agricultural renewal, it is absolutely essential that the emergencies be kept in mind. The weakness of economies and of its institutions place Africa at a great disadvantage when calamity strikes. Thus, given its high indebtedness and current account deficit, Africa is obliged by emergency-related needs to divert its very scarce resources to food imports—it does so at a cost to investment in its future; Africa is a continent that is consuming without being able to create assets for the future. Therefore to ignore the emergency dimension would be a disservice to securing stable agricultural development in the region—Chapter 4 has a section on this area of need.
Associated with response to emergencies and their aftermath should be the creation of targeted safety nets by governments aimed at broadening access to food for persons who do not have the means of increasing their own food supplies, such as school children.
Improvement of production
Food security can also be secured through improvement of production. The second part of Chapter 4 presents one approach towards promoting vigorous large-sale community-based programmes to improve the performance of small farms throughout the continent. It draws mainly upon the example set by the Special Programme for Food Security (SPFS), launched by FAO as a means of achieving and sustaining a higher level of household and national food security. In each country, the SPFS is planned within the broader vision of a National Strategy for Food Security and Agricultural Development. Thus the SPFS approach complements and builds upon already existing strategies and programmes for agricultural development and food security developed by African governments and regional organisations. It is implemented in two interrelated Phases. As detailed in Chapter 4, Phase I aims at enabling households and communities to attain higher levels of food security and better livelihoods, initially on a pilot scale but quickly followed by progressive scaling up. Phase II addresses food security issues at national level through creating an enabling policy and institutional environment for food security and supporting the preparation of bankable projects.
The SPFS recognises the importance of respecting economic fundamentals: African production must be competitive as it makes little sense to have high cost products whose markets are easily undermined by cheaper imports. For this reason, SPFS-type interventions need complementary investments in infrastructure, water and land management that can boost yields, reduce unit production costs and contain the cost of storage, transport and marketing—themes which are covered in Chapters 2 and 3. The approach seeks to reduce both weather-related and other environmental risks as well as economic risks, all of which have a significant depressing impact on the level private investment in the agricultural sector.
Chapter 4 recognises that raising the output of the small farmer sector depends on the decisions of millions of household throughout the continent and, in such a situation, the role of governments should be to provide a policy and incentive framework that is conducive to agricultural growth. With this is place, much of the investment in raising production will be made by the farmers themselves. It contrasts the situation of the African farm with other regions in farm productivity: in 2001 its cereal yield averaged 1230 kg/ha for the European Union. It makes similar comparisons in use of irrigation; use of yield-enhancing inputs (such as fertilisers, improved seeds, vaccines and others).
The SPFS approach promotes the view that food security does not mean just subsistence food sufficiency but also implies addressing the other underlying causes of persistent rural poverty. Thus, while it may appear to emphasise production, this is not in exclusion of demand considerations in that the incentive for continuing output growth is the “market”. It is in this latter context that national programmes can benefit from complementary food security interventions at
regional level that can facilitate trade-related capacities for improved market access, the development of common standards and the diagnosis and control of transboundary pests and diseases. Some of the market issues are dealt with in greater detail in Chapter 3.
Regional Programmes for Food Security (RPFS) offer measure to expand intra-regional trade and competitiveness in external markets, to assist in creating improved conditions for the sustainable growth of agriculture, including through trade facilitation, harmonisation of policies and underpinning of national SPFS, especially in areas of accelerated technology development and information, to ensure sustainable use of cross-boundary natural resources, to provide for control of transboundary pests and diseases. At Present, Africa’s Regional Economic Organisations have developed and are seeking funding for PRFS. Regional cooperation in support of food security is an area where NEPAD, in close collaboration with Regional Economic Organisations, can make significant early contributions.
Based on the experience acquired so far in implementing the Special Programme, average costs to be incurred by the public sector to ensure food security for a small farm household can be estimated US$500. The breakdown varies according to the different options facing farm households: typically it includes around US$350-400 per family for on-farm investments, particularly in land and water management, as well as inputs including young stock, fertilisers, seeds and equipment (to be repaid into revolving funds) and thereby ensure sustainability. Some US$35-85 is required for off-farm support, including technical services (backed in many cases by South-South Co-operation), participatory constraints analysis and inputs into policy reform. A further US$65 equivalent per family can be allowed for complementary food security investments at a regional level.
Even if individual intervention can be at community scale, to have a significant impact on reducing poverty and hunger, programmes to increase food supply and reduce hunger should be collectively massive in scale. For Africa, the intention adopted in Chapter 4 is to raise the performance of some 15 million rural households (affecting the livelihoods of some 100 million people) by 2015 which would require some $7.5 billion. Of this, $6.5 billion would be for national level and $1 billion for regional action programmes. The distribution of costs between regions is based on country-level data on the number of undernourished, given in the FAO Report “ The State of Food Insecurity 2001”. The effectiveness of such programmes for on-farm development or related improvements at community level is dependent on the investments proposed in productive and transport and communications infrastructure in Chapters 2 and 3 of this document.
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