Delegates of the National Agriculture Investment Plan (NAIP) formulation pose for a group photo |
The Federal Government has, in line with the ‘Green
Alternative’ policy, started the domestication of ‘Malabo Declaration’ in the
agricultural sector.
This was made known by the Deputy Director, Policy Implementation
Department Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Sylvester Baye, at a 3-day meeting organized
by the African Union, (AU) and New Partnership for Africa Development, (NEPAD) on
‘Expert Panel to Draft New Plan for Achieving Economic Diversity through Major
Investments in Agriculture’ in Abuja.
Baye told Food Farm News
during an interview that the key purpose of the meeting was on review of
the plan for making crop, livestock and fisheries the centrepiece of Nigeria’s
economic development agenda.
He added that the effort of domesticating the Malabo
declaration would enhance Nigeria’s National Agriculture Investment Plan, NAIP,
to align with commitments contained in the AU’s 2014 ‘Malabo Declaration’,
which seeks to halve poverty rates by 2025 through agriculture-led economic
growth. The deputy director said Nigerian government has been committed to the
process of domesticating the ‘Malabo Declaration, which hinged on transparency
in policy formulation and implementation in line with the three cardinal
principles of transparency, accountability and peer reviewing of Comprehensive
Africa Agriculture Development Programme, CAADP, and National Agriculture
Investment Plan, NAIP.
He stressed that In the African region
as far as Agriculture is concerned Nigeria has recorded quiet a lot of progress
and that the ‘Malabo Declaration’ is just being domesticated and there is no
country that could say they have been able to do it. “This is because Malabo
Commitment is coming up through the second generation of the NAIP every country
has started the process and also Nigeria has started it. Every country has its
own home grown policy and there are standards of reporting of whatever you are
doing. You have to be seen following the principles of CAADP and NAIP, which
include transparency, accountability and peer reviewing. Nigeria’s focus now is
transparency, stating that there are a lot of work going on with the issue of
transparency, which is one cardinal principle of CAADP and NAIP. If things are
done transparently, there will be rapid development of commercial agriculture.
So far we cannot say this is the extent of achievement of Malabo Declaration
but Malabo Declaration is in progress” he explained.
The Program Officer, AGRA Nigeria Dr. Kehinde Makinde, said
that the meeting is about the Nigerian Agriculture Investment Plan, which essentially reemphasized the commitment
that were made in 2006, which is basically getting Africa back to food
sufficiency, “the idea is to make sure that Africa comes out of food poverty,
and is able to ensure food for its citizenry, so this meeting called Malabo
domestication with frame work developed by CAADP and African countries
emulating it to know what is the implications of that and what is the investment planning process
to make it happen in Nigeria. The meeting is looking to understand better the
green alternative program of the federal government of Nigeria, to understand
what are the investment components that are there and to see how these can work
with the continental agenda, which is the CAADP framework and then see how we
can get a road map towards the implementation of the green alternative agenda
of the federal government of Nigeria”,.
He added that although Nigeria was doing well sustaining the
Malabo declarations she still had some challenges as regards to food sufficiency,
“particularly in terms of staples like rice and wheat but Nigeria is also self-sufficient
in other staples, like yam, Nigeria is the largest producers of cowpea in the
world. We are to gather top five commodities that the Nigeria community
consume, on this process, the wheat and the rice where they have challenges,
but when you talk about yam, cassava and few other crops will be a good prospect
and now that Nigeria is bringing all its tools together to ensure that we increase
rice production and also reduce importation of country”, and that by the time
the process is concluded, it is expected that government will have a strategy
for ensuring food security.
The Senior Advisor and CAADP Team Leader, African Union
Commission, Ernest Ruzindaza, said the AU and NEPAD were out to see how African
countries could put in more resources into agriculture and also create wealth
and employment for their youth and women.
He said many countries in 2003 financed their agricultural
sector by two per cent budgetary allocation but after 10 years of CAADP there
was significant improvement as some countries were putting more than 10 per
cent of their budget into the sector, while the average was seven per cent,
which were a big achievement and a positive trend. “We are also achieving
growth and growth target in CAADP was six per cent per year, and in average we
did not reach the six per cent, and there was a positive trend which was four
per cent. “
But still the ‘Malabo Commitment’ is aiming at six per cent
per year when it comes to agriculture growth. That growth will translate into
good livelihood of the people and job creation for our youth and women.
The consultative interface meeting between the Federal
Ministries of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), National Planning
& Budget, Finance Ministry and international partners organized by Alliance
for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is expected to advance the agricultural
sector towards achieving the African Heads of states’ resolution targeted to
reducing hunger drastically by 2025, using the CAADP-Malabo declaration.
This meeting was expected to enhance the agricultural policy
to conform to best global practice as Nigeria’s New Green Alternation Policy
would be repositioned to achieve the foundation for the New National
Agricultural investment Plan (NAIP) with other technical partners following the
guidelines of Malabo declaration.
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