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| AGRF |
The Sixth African Green Revolution
Forum (AGRF) was held in Nairobi, Kenya, from 5 to 9 September, 2016. It
attracted more than 1500 delegates from 40 countries.
The AGRF once again
proved to be a multi-stakeholder forum bringing together a diverse range of
influential change agents from across the African agriculture landscape and
around the world. They included African Heads of State, global business leaders,
ministers, farmers and farmer organizations, private agribusiness firms,
financial institutions, civil society groups and scientists, as well as
international development and
technical partners.
The theme of this year’s AGRF was
“Seize the Moment: Securing Africa’s Rise through Agricultural Transformation.”
The forum built on a campaign to “Seize the Moment” that
was launched at the 12th
Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Partnership
Platform meeting in Accra, Ghana in April 2016. The campaign is
backed by the African Union, the New
Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the African Development Bank
(AfDB), and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), along with
key civil-society groups, farmer groups, companies and development partners.
“Seize the Moment” recognizes the
significant progress African countries have made over the last decade to build
a foundation for a renaissance in the agriculture sector both on and off the
farm across the entire value chain. But it also recognizes that much more needs
to be done. Countries still have a long way to go to achieve food security and
ensure equal access to economic opportunity for all Africans. Africa today is
facing strong headwinds. The challenges include rapid urbanization, climate
change that is generating more stressful growing conditions, significant
unemployment in which one in three Africans from 15 to 35 years
old are jobless and chronic malnutrition that has left 58 million children
stunted. AGRF partners understand that addressing these issues requires firm
political, policy and financial commitments, guided by a clear agenda and
strong mechanisms for measuring progress.
The ambition of the forum is to
accelerate the progress on agriculture’s contribution to economic growth and transformation
for shared prosperity and improved livelihoods for all, in line with delivering
on the Malabo Goals and targets. Over the course of the five-day forum,
delegates put forward and began to coalesce around a set of important
commitments that the AGRF platform can pursue in the medium-term to realize the ambitious goals laid
out in the 2014 Malabo Declaration and the United Nations’ Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs). During the next 16 months before the African Union
Heads of State and Government Summit and CAADP biennial review in January 2018,
the AGRF partners pledged to: pursue a political, policy and business agenda
intended to accelerate smallholder-inclusive agricultural transformation in at least 20 countries; unlock at
least US $200 billion in investment in African agriculture; and develop a
concise agricultural transformation scorecard for accountability and action
under the leadership of African Union institutions. They are captured in the
following nine action points:
i. Refresh investment plans to unlock
10% of public expenditure on agriculturethat can be clearly leveraged to attract
significant additional resources from private sector and other partners.
ii. Actualize commitments made by the
private sector through platforms such as Grow Africa or others to bring at
least US $20 billion of private investment into African
agriculture and galvanize broader
investment.
iii. Develop and launch innovative
financing mechanisms,including Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) agricultural
financing mechanisms such as incentive-based risk-sharing facilities for
agricultural lending, social impact bonds, catalytic financing facilities and
agriculture-relevant e-wallet and digital financing mechanisms.
iv. Support at least 20 countries to
develop their agriculture transformation agenda,
including identification and significant
scaling up of five priority value chains per country with strong links to
smallholder agriculture, strong focus on youth employment and a commitment to building
resilience to shocks to the agriculture system.
v. Identify and unlock five main policy
and regulatory bottlenecksper country that are inhibiting agriculture sector
growth.
vi. Establish and support agriculture
transformation delivery mechanisms appropriately tailored to the national
context and needs in at least 10 countries.
vii. Support countries to strengthen
capacities, including the cultivation of a new wave of public and private
sector agriculture transformation leaders
.
viii. Produce and use an agriculture
transformation scorecard at the heart of the CAADP biennial review process,including
a one-page snapshot for Heads of State.
ix. Hold at least two Ministerial peer
review round tables prior to the 2018 African Union Heads of State and
Government Summit to challenge and validate emerging biennial review reports
and actions.
At AGRF 2016, many of Africa’s
steadfast champions of agriculture stepped forward with significant and
concrete commitments that have already begun to put this nine-point plan into
action. They pledged more than US $30 billion in investments to increase
production, income and employment for smallholder farmers and local African
agriculture businesses over the next 10 years. The collective pledges are
believed to represent the largest package of financial commitments to the
African agricultural sector to date, and they are backed by the broadest
coalition ever assembled in support of the entire agribusiness value chain.
African governments represented by
H.E. President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, H.E. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Cabinet
Ministers and senior government officials from more than 20 countries across
the continent laid out a bold vision for how agriculture transformation will
drive economic transformation.
President Kenyatta put forth
concrete proposals that included a call for governments to refresh multi-year plans
for agriculture development; a push to mobilize a combination of US $400
billion in public and private sector resources; and an effort to put in place
the continental agricultural transformation scorecard that would measur and track all commitments to ensure
they trigger action. H.E. President Kenyatta stepped forward as one of the first
champions of the “Seize the Moment” campaign, committing himself to deliver this
agenda. He announced his government’s commitment to invest US $200 million so
at least 150,000 young farmers and young agriculture entrepreneurs can gain access to
markets, finance and insurance.
President Kagame stepped forward
as the other initial champion of the “Seize the Moment” campaign. Building on
his long-standing leadership in putting agricultural transformation at the center of
Rwanda’s economic transformation and improvements in human well-being, President
Kagame challenged the continent and other leaders around the world. He noted
that, “We should not only seize the moment but continue momentum for
transformation of agriculture and economies of our continent. Agriculture is
not just one sector of the economy amongst others – it’s the backbone of the
economy. We need to strengthen the involvement of other parts of the value
chain, especially the private sector. Let’s have more action and less talk.”
The United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) launched a global report entitled “A
Food-Secure 2030” and set the tone for supporting Africa’s agricultural transformation
agenda with its political and financial commitment through the Global Food
Security Act, which is the largest development authorization the US Congress
has
made in a decade.
Other development partners including
the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
the Rockefeller Foundation, the International Fund for Agricultural Development
(IFAD), the MasterCard Foundation, and the World Food Programme (WFP) recommitted
and intensified their long-standing support for African agriculture.
A representative set of private
sector partners including AGCO Corporation, Kenya Commercial Bank Group (KCB), Equity
Bank, OCP Africa, UPL and Yara International ASA (Yara) committed to
significant new investments to boost production for smallholder farmers and
link them to lucrative agriculture value chains. Their work is expected to deliver,
among other things, a major increase in financing for smallholder farmers and
SME agribusinesses; an increase in use of seeds, fertilizers and other inputs;
an increase in manufacturing capacity oriented around smallholder farmers; and
the development of efficient and sustainable value chains, such as potatoes and
pulses in East Africa.
Regional institutions led by the
African Union Commission and NEPAD Agency committed to driving the CAADP biennial
review process and implementing the scorecard on agricultural transformation
for tracking progress in the “Seize the Moment” campaign and beyond.
The actions taken over the next 16
months until the January 2018 AU Summit will be critical to delivering on this
agenda and contributing to achievement of the goals laid out in the Malabo
Declaration. The AGRF partners intend to build on the momentum established at
AGRF 2016 by developing a work plan that will tie together the most important
moments and forums of the African agriculture community to secure further commitments to the “Seize
the Moment” campaign and ensure progress.
The AGRF Partners Group concluded
AGRF 2016 with an agreement that the 2017 AGRF will be co-hosted by the Government
of Côte d’Ivoire, AfDB and AGRA in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.
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