by Adam Alqali  & Muhammad Usman

The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) is one of the frameworks under the African Union’s Agenda 2063 supporting countries to boost agricultural investment and productivity to end hunger and poverty towards economic growth and  development.

The CAADP framework is a major outcome of the Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security in Africa, proclaimed at the 2nd Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union, in July 2003, at Maputo, Mozambique. The most prominent aspect of the Declaration was African heads of state’s commitment to allocate at least 10% of their national budgets to agriculture towards achieving agricultural growth rates of 6% per annum.

In June 2014, at the 23rd Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the AU in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, the heads of state adopted the Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods. The highpoint of the Declaration was African leaders’ recommitment to CAADP principles towards the realization of the vision of improved livelihoods and ending hunger by 2025.

To this end, the evidence-based and peer-driven CAADP Biennial Review (BR) process was initiated based on the CAADP Results Framework 2015-2025, to achieve preselected goals and targets for the transformation of Africa’s agriculture.  The BR report indicates outcomes of diverse agricultural interventions on the continent, enabling countries to track and report progress achieved against the pre-agreed result areas.

Also, the BR seeks to stimulate dialogues and action within countries and Regional Economic Communities (RECs). Each edition is an outcome of collaborative efforts of AU Member States and RECs, under the leadership of the AU Commission and the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) – as mandated by the Assembly to produce a CAADP progress report, every two years.

In this direction, the inaugural and second CAADP BR reports were adopted by the AU Assembly in January 2018 and February 2020, respectively. In February 2022, the Assembly endorsed the 3rd BR report which was eventually launched publicly in March – in line with efforts to increase awareness among stakeholders and build momentum around the CAADP agenda for improved political and financial commitments.

The BR3 comes midway into the implementation of the Malabo Declaration (2015-2025), amidst the Covid-19 pandemic’s devastating effects on Africa’s food systems, and in the aftermath of the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS). At UNFSS, Africa presented a common position on the pandemic’s impact on the continent’s food systems, recommitting to advance agricultural transformation through strengthening of CAADP and its BR process.

The CAADP framework has 4 priority areas, namely: Extending the area under sustainable land management and reliable water control systems; Improving rural infrastructure and trade-related capacities for market access; Increasing food supply, reducing hunger, and improving responses to food emergency crises; as well as Improving agricultural research, technology dissemination and adoption.

While the BR reporting process is premised on the 7 Malabo Commitments, namely; Recommitment to the principles and values of the CAADP process; Enhancing investment finance in agriculture; Ending hunger by 2025; and halving poverty through agriculture by 2025. Others are boosting intra-African trade in agricultural commodities and services; Enhancing resilience to climate variability; as well as strengthening mutual accountability for actions and results.

Whereas 51 out of 55 states reported in the BR3 cycle, only 49 did during the BR2 cycle – just as 43 countries were reviewed in the inaugural cycle. The BR reports evaluate country-by-country performance towards achieving CAADP’s goals and targets – disaggregated into 7 thematic areas and varied performance categories and indicators. In comparison, BR1 (2017) had 23 performance categories and 43 indicators, while BR2 (2019) had 24 performance categories and 47 indicators – just as BR3 (2021) had 23 performance categories and 46 indicators.

Perhaps, the most remarkable aspect of BR3 is the fact that only one country (Rwanda) is “on track” to achieve the Malabo Commitments by 2025 – against 4 and 20 countries that were on-track in the BR2 and BR1 cycles, respectively. This is just as 41 others are “not on track” while 4 countries (Mauritius, Sahrawi, Sao Tome and Principe, and Somalia) were unable to report in this cycle.

Even as the progressive decline in numbers of on track countries across successive BR cycles is an important cause for concern, one that points to the need for African countries to rededicate themselves to the CAADP agenda, the AU believes the fact that 19 out of the 51 countries reviewed in the 3rd BR cycle were “progressing well”, “reflects the commitment by Member States to the CAADP BR process and their efforts to address the shortfalls revealed in the inaugural and 2nd BR reports.”

Based on the Africa Agriculture Transformation Scorecard (AATS), a shared-learning tool for driving progress in the continent’s agricultural transformation, minimum scores for countries to be on track have evolved from 3.96 out of 10 (BR1) to 6.66 (BR2) and 7.28 (BR3).  The benchmark will continue to rise through 2025. Accordingly, Africa’s overall score under BR3 is 4.32 – against the 7.28 benchmark – barely a 7% increase in the continent’s overall scores against the previous cycle.

While Africa only achieved “mixed progress” in BR3, one cannot ignore the role of the Covid-19 pandemic on the continent’s agriculture and food security during the cycle in the rather uninspiring performance. Against the expectation of continuous performance improvement ahead of 2025,  Africa’s cumulative scores across successive BR reporting cycles reveal a continent of continuous regress regarding the Malabo Commitments.

Dr Godfrey Bahiigwa, director in charge of agriculture and rural development at the AU Commission, partly blamed the slow progress between BR2 (2019) and BR3 cycles (2021), compared to between BR1 (2017) and BR2 (2019) cycles, on many factors including the Covid-19 pandemic, in response to which African countries imposed lockdowns, hindering trade in agricultural commodities.

“First, trade across the continent is largely in agricultural commodities, so when borders were closed, the volume of trade declined, which impacted negatively on many indicators such as agricultural trade, food and nutrition security and subsequently led to a decline in the consumption of the affected commodities. This consequently led to increased prices of the affected commodities,” the director told African Newspage.

In addition, Dr Bahiigwa said drought in Southern Africa, the Desert Locust invasion of the Horn of Africa and parts of West Africa, as well as the Covid-19-induced slowdown of economic activities and its resultant decline in GDP growth, contributed to African countries’ low performance during the 3rd BR cycle.

“Because economic activities slowed down as a result of border closures and reduced manufacturing, there were reduced customs and excise duties for governments to generate revenues. This affects member states’ ability to finance their programmes, including in the agricultural sector. Within this period, countries’ inability to allocate 10% of their national expenditures to agriculture is partly understandable,” explained Bahiigwa.

On the consistent failure of an overwhelming majority of AU states to dedicate 10% of their annual expenditures to agriculture, as enshrined in CAADP, Dr Bahiigwa said: “I cannot speak for each individual country, but having worked in government before, I will say governments do have competing needs and face different pressures which determines how they allocate resources, based on their individual priorities.

“In this regard, our argument to them as the AU is: ‘by not allocating 10% of your budgets to agriculture you are hurting your people because the outcomes are poor!’ Member States should increase their agricultural expenditure because that is the only way they can achieve better outcomes, in terms of nutrition, employment, poverty reduction, and resilience,” said Bahiigwa.

“Non-state actors will continue to foster mutual accountability in the BR process” – Okeke

Constance Okeke, project manager for Public Financing for Agriculture (PFA) at Action Aid International, said even as Africa’s non-state actors were “quite disappointed” with the fact that only one country was “on track” to achieving the Malabo Commitments during the 3rd BR cycle, the fact that 19 others were “progressing well” was a major consolation.

“The major outcome is that more countries are presenting themselves to be held accountable; the fact that they are even reporting is significant progress. What exactly we are measuring, how we are measuring it and whether or not it is exactly what we want to measure is entirely another conversation. There is much more to the BR process than simply being or not being on track,” Okeke told African Newspage.

Okeke, who described data analysis tools for the BR process as effective, decried countries’ consistent inability to provide complete data across all indicators of the reporting process. “The challenge before us in the continent is ensuring we are collecting the right data, at the right time and from the appropriate sources. You consistently find certain data missing in the BR reporting, hence the need for countries to invest in improving data collection.”

She believes transforming Africa’s agriculture goes beyond improved political commitment and public financing but also the creation of open spaces for multi-stakeholder engagement involving the civil society, media, young people and smallholder farmers. Okeke says more inclusive stakeholder engagement will foster effective utilization of the BR reports at regional, national and sub-national levels – in line with its principles of mutual accountability.

“More involvement of non-state actors in joint sector reviews and consultations will engender robust engagements and enrich data quality. We cannot overlook the fact that over 60% of all working women in Africa are in agriculture, hence redressing gender inequality is also key in the fight against hunger, poverty, and malnutrition, and promoting economic growth.  We are therefore calling for more gender-disaggregated data in subsequent BR reports.

“As non-state actors, we’ll continue to ensure the BR reports are amplified. We’ll work with parliamentarians, the media, young people and smallholder farmers, especially women, to utilise the BR reports in holding the government, partners and ourselves accountable. The underlying issue is the real impact of the reports on the lives of farmers. We hope by 2025, Africa will make significant progress in achieving CAADP’s goals and targets,” concluded Okeke.

Conclusions, recommendations

One of the highlights of the 2014 Malabo Declaration is the call on Member States to develop compliant National Agricultural Investments Plans (NAIPs) by 2018 – as key instruments for implementing programmes to deliver on the 7 Malabo Commitments. Hence, the BR3 report identified the fact that not all Member States had “fully and consistently” done so as a major reason why the continent was not on-track to meet the commitments.

In addition, the review noted several countries were unable to report on certain indicators because they did not have the required data built into their national agricultural systems, and decried the fact that although climate change and climate variability posed a significant threat to Africa’s agricultural transformation, overall, the continent was off-track on indicators related to resilience to climate change.

In addressing these and other key gaps inhibiting the successful realization of the Malabo Commitments, the report held that all stakeholders should, “ensure that national dialogue processes are convened to reflect on and discuss the results of this third BR report with a view to prioritizing and developing policy and programmatic responses to speed up the achievement of the Malabo Declaration. This has been done in the past and has proven its worth.”

Moreover, BR3 insisted on strengthening mutual accountability systems by integrating a broader range of stakeholders including the private sector, farmer organizations, civil society organizations, and development partners in the entire process – to guarantee the utilization of the reports. Considering their key role in the production of quality country BR reviews, the report called for strengthening of the capacity of the RECs to undertake this crucial role.

BR3 called for strengthening of Africa’s risk preparedness and social protection. “The lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic should inform future responses to agriculture-related disasters including climatic and price shocks. Therefore, governments in Africa should sustain the strategic institutions, partnerships and funding mechanisms that have been fostered for responding to future shocks with a view to building a resilient African food system.”

The AU was urged to review how successive BR reports were being utilized to address the ever-increasing gap between continental performance scores and the benchmarks. “It cannot be over-emphasized that CAADP in general, and the BR process in particular, requires stronger political leadership and commitment and the requisite capacity at all levels in order to drive government and stakeholder buy-in for financing and implementation of key recommendations.”

You can download a copy of the 3rd CAADP Biennial Review Report in four (4) different AU languages here