COMING UP!>>32nd Edition: Africa’s Agriculture: the Compelling Impetus of CAADP for Africa’s Integration

32^nd Edition:  

Africa’s Agriculture: the Compelling Impetus of CAADP for Africa’s Integration

We want to use the thirty-second edition of the Africa in Focus show to reprise the very critical discussion of Africa’s agriculture.

Our earlier discussions last year had centred on the role of organisations like AgriPro, which are doing great things around the youth and agric. This year, the focus is necessarily continental, with a focus on what synergies can be created between the AU’s Continental CAADP Programme and the CAADP Country Teams, which are critical in the implementation of CAADP – especially at a time when CAADP has entered the next stage of Implementation and Strategy with a view to a 2025 goal.

From 2013 through to mid-2014, all AU Member States were involved in ministerial meetings, including being involved in eighteen months of consultations at the national, regional, and continental level, to draw up the AU Heads of State and Government Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods. The Declaration made no less than seven specific commitments to achieve agricultural growth and transformation for shared prosperity and improved livelihoods, including: upholding 10% public spending target; and sustaining annual agricultural GDP at least 6%.

Even more remarkable, however, is how commitments such as the operationalisation of the African Investment Bank; and fast-tracking of the Continental Free Trade Area (by 2017) find themselves as part of the targets. This makes for interesting conversations around how agriculture can continue to cross-cut through African integration dynamics and become a fully-fledged compelling impetus for Africa’s transformative growth.

These dynamics are part of what will animate discussions around Africa’s agriculture for which reason we are happy to speak to two members of Ghana’s CAADP Country Team; an official of the technical arm of the AU Commission; and finally, a technical expert of the West Africa Agricultural Productivity Programme (WAAPP), which is the closest we have come to speaking to the issue of agriculture/CAADP at the regional level. Our efforts to grant an interview to the DG of the Agriculture and Food Agency in Lome, Mr.Salifou, proved futile.

Remarkably, all the organisations we are speaking to on 17 February have one thing in common: they are all linked to CAADP’s Pillar IV.

Now while “Pillar IV” sounds like part of a typical address in Ghana, when located in the context of Africa’s agriculture, it means a whole lot as it refers to agricultural research and technological dissemination and adoption of CAADP.

Join us if you can at 1pm on 17 February, 2015.

Guiding questions

• Why are CAADP Country Teams critical in the implementation of CAADP?
• FARA has been around for 12 years in Ghana. Why has it found it difficult resonating with the Ghanaian public around agriculture?
• How consistent with CAADP implementation is the FARA Strategic Plan 2014-2018?
• What are the synergies between CAADP and WAAPP?

Guests in the studio:

Ø  Kingsley Ofei-Nkansah, Secretary-General, General Agricultural Worker’s Union(GAWU)

Ø  Marjorie Abdin, CAADP Country Team Member

Ø  Mr.Demby, Communications Officer/CAADP Rep, Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa(FARA)

On the line:

·        Dr.Alphonse Belane , West Africa Agricultural Productivity Programme(WAAPP) @13h20

“Africa in Focus” Show on Radio XYZ93.1 FM returns with a discussion on Africa’s integration

“Africa in Focus” Show on Radio XYZ93.1 FM returns with a discussion on Africa’s integration

By E.K.Bensah Jr

After almost two weeks of being off air, the one-month old “Africa in Focus” show is back with a bang on Radio xyz93.1 fm.

In the last edition on 3 June, 2014, Emmanuel hosted two people in the studio. These were Ashesi University’s Dr. Lloyd Amoah, and Capacity Building Development Officer of the West Africa Civil Society Institute(WACSI) Charles Van Dyck.

On the line in Addis were Dr.Joseph Atta-Mensah of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, and Mkhululi Ncube, former UNECA official-turned-entrepreneur in his own country of Zimbabwe.

The show sought to interrogate the question of whether Africa is integrating. The general consensus at the end of the show clearly showed there is a lot of work to be done on sensitizing Africans to the urgency of building Africa’s integration process.

As explained by the UNECA’s Dr.Joseph Atta-Mensah, there are a number of milestones that have been chalked along the road to Africa’s integration. These include the Sirte Declaration on 1999 that sought to fast-track integration. He concedes there remains much to be done – even if leaders are slowly and surely recognizing the necessity of integration.

 Mkhu Ncube related to the audience how the East African Business Council works very efficiently – as does the one for the COMESA sub-region (populated by 19 member countries). He confessed that though he is a national of the SADC region, he cannot vouch for the efficiency of a Business Council in that part of the world. Without a doubt, though, he believes the private sector is going to have to take charge on Africa’s integration, because governments are never going to automatically give that space.

We learnt from Dr.Amoah, who has recently penned a book on Africa’s telecommunications, that there are only three member countries – Ghana; Nigeria; and Rwanda – that have so-called TelChams, or Telecommunications Chambers. By virtue of Ghana’s small market being populated by six telcos, this country was always going to be an important test-case on TelChams. Nigeria’s is the largest, though not necessarily the most efficient. With regard to Rwanda, we find this to be an interesting case in the sense that that country is seeking to position itself as the cyber-gateway to East Africa. This is certainly something many African countries can learn from—as well as leveraging on the immense potential that telcos offer to help create synergy in Africa’s integration. All that said, it is pitiful to have only three member countries out of a whopping fifty-four be the only ones to have TelChams.

WACSI’s Charles VanDyck stressed the fact that African integration is a “bread-and-butter” issue, and that African peoples are already integrating. It is time governments began to domesticate the many protocols they are quick to sign, and ensure that Africans feel well-integrated. Even if West Africa has made commendable effort on free movement, clearly, much still needs to be done.

ENDs