UN Agriculture, Food Security and Rural Development Cluster Meeting

The Agriculture, Food Security and Rural Development Cluster (AFSRDC) for which FAO is the convener, brings together 14 UN Agencies and financial institutions involved in supporting food security and agricultural development in Africa. These are FAO, IFAD, WFP, ECA, the World Bank, IAEA, UNDP, UNIDO, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNHCR, WIPO and WTO. The Cluster's mission is to provide coordinated and effective support to the agriculture, food security and rural development agenda of the African Union Commission (AUC), NEPAD, the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and ultimately the countries themselves.

The Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), adopted in July 2003 by African Heads of State and Government, remains the overarching framework guiding the work of the Cluster. It is the continent's programme launched with the objective of revitalizing agriculture growth as a strategy to combat poverty and hunger in Africa, thus achieving the Millennium Development Goal 1 (MDG1) of halving the number of the hungry and poor by half by 2015. Accordingly, the AUC and the NEPAD Secretariat, now NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency (NPCA) called on all development partners to align their food security and agriculture development support in Africa with the CAADP principles and targets.