Remarks of H.E. Rhoda Peace Tumusiime,
Commissioner of Rural Economy and Agriculture, African Union Commission

on the occasion of Meeting the President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)

Addis, March, 15, 2013

Excellency, Ms. Jane Karuku, President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)

Members of Staff of the AGRA, AUC-DREA and other members

Ladies and Gentlemen

Let me start by thanking Your Excellency, Mme Jane Karuku for honouring my invitation and I wish to welcome you to Addis Ababa and, in particular, to the African Union Commission.

Let me start by stating that the Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture which I head is much bigger than the size you see here, and it covers over ten sectors, subdivided into two strategic areas of intervention which are: Agriculture and Food Security, and Environment and Natural Resources Management. In addition to the Headquarter-based Office, my department has 6 specialised technical offices under it, which are IBAR in Nairobi dealing with livestock, PATTEC in Addis Ababa handling tse-tse and trypanosomiasis, PANVAC in Debre Zeit, Ethiopia, in charge of veterinary vaccines IAPSC in Yaounde on phytosanitary matters, SAFGRAD in Ouagadougou coordinating dryland research and development and Fouta Djallon in Conakry on integrated highland development. As you may note, we spread across the continent.

I value this moment as it falls within the framework of the productive partnership between the African Union Commission and the Alliance for a Green Revolution.

Within the field of agriculture, the AUC-DREA and the AGRA have been collaborating in multiple engagements and we have initiatives where we have been quite close in supporting AU Member States to implement the decisions of the AU Policy Organs up to the highest level, especially in the context of the overarching framework provided by the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) with a view to ensuring increased agricultural production, productivity, food and nutrition security. They include extension services, input delivery, output market development and functioning, and farmer organization and capacity building.

I wish, at this juncture, to commend AGRA for the continued partnership with AUC and for the work in advancing agricultural development at country-level across the continent. Working together in these and many other areas, we have registered significant achievements for our continent and especially at the Member States’ level. And what we have noted is that the more we deliver, the more is demanded of us. Hence the need for our continued improvement of our work in mutual reinforcement and complementarity to bring forth the desired results and impacts especially at implementation level and bringing on board real players, The Women.

I, therefore, wish to call for closer collaboration between AGRA and AUC-DREA in furtherance of the shared goal of increased agricultural production, productivity, food and nutrition security on the continent. We need to step up these especially now as we vision and dream for a better continent, and as we mark 10 years of the existence of the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), in addition to other related processes we are engaged in.

I hope you also know that the AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government decided in July last year to declare 2014 The AU Year of Agriculture and Food Security. We will need to work more closely to ensure that the year brings to fruition some of the ongoing pertinent initiatives in the context of CAADP. We will consider some of these during the CAADP Partnership Platform Meeting scheduled for Addis Ababa on 25-27 March 2013 and we hope that AGRA will participate fully during this meeting that will focus on preparations for 2014 AU Year of Agriculture and Food Security as we look at where we want to go from here given the interrelated nature of agriculture with environment, climate change, water and other key sectors.

Looking more critically at agriculture, I need not over-emphasize the importance of this sector for our continent, our nations and our communities, from food and nutrition to jobs and incomes. If Africa took agriculture more seriously, we would be respected and Africa would participate more effectively in global development. Other continents have successfully used agriculture as a premise for development, why not Africa?

I must, nonetheless, say that in partnership, we all share the joy of seeing 30 countries having signed CAADP Compacts that encapsulate multi-stakeholder consensus and partner buy-in on the key drivers of agricultural production, productivity, food and nutrition security. We have also seen Regional Compacts starting with the one of ECOWAS and the upcoming one of COMESA, and others in the pipeline.

We are also happy to see that more and more of these countries have gone further to draw up credible investment plans and also to put in their own resources and more investments in agriculture as they also mobilize bilateral and multilateral public and private support. We see more commitment by AU Member States at bilateral and multilateral levels and we need to take advantage of this state of affairs and plan together and implement as we are targeting the same constituency. We have seen good responses from partners particularly countries prepared investment plans. It is important and imperative that the AGRA buys into the investment plans agreed to by countries with all partners. I do appreciate the much work done by the AGRA.

We would like to see AGRA involved more in the process of putting together investment plans. Wherever you have been you have added value. We want countries to take advantage of how AGRA does business. As we mark 10 years since CAADP was adopted in 2003, we as AUC, AfDB, UNECA, NPCA, RECs and other Pan African institutions including AGRA, are called upon to step up our efforts in sustaining the momentum so that our people see concrete results on the ground in terms of food, nutrition, jobs and incomes. There is talk of Millennium Development Goals but for us it is about African dignity and without food we can’t have dignity. As we celebrate this year the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the OAU, predecessor to AU, we will focus on the vision of a food and nutrition as we consider the Theme of the Golden Jubilee: Pan Africanism and African Renaissance. There are many activities involved apart from agriculture and we have not forget our other areas of intervention

I am sure you have heard, time and again, that we have many declarations and decisions on strategic commodities, on value chain development, on fertilizer use, on irrigation, on agricultural research and technology, on sanitary and phytosanitary issues, on post-harvest loss reduction, GMOs and so on. It is our collective efforts that we will support AU Member States to translate these into reality: food, water, sanitation, and environmental sustainability. It doesn’t help when we get decisions and not have them implemented.

I would like to draw your attention to the African Fertiliser Financing Mechanism. You are implementing input delivery. We cannot increase productivity unless we have inputs and particularly fertilizers. It is important for AGRA to support the AFFM to take root. As you are aware, it arose out of the decision of Heads of State and Government at the Abuja Summit of 2006. A review was done and it was noted that unless African agriculture accesses fertilizers we cannot make it. The figure was 8 kg per ha and now it has increased to 11 kg per ha probably because of the collective efforts including those of AGRA – but the AU Abuja Summit decision called for 50 kg per ha. We need to actualize the AFFM. We can discuss this matter much further. At the CAADP PP we plan to call a meeting with other players on the fertilizer use, production, accessibility and marketing.

As part of our partnership building, we have been engaging the G8 among others especially since 2009 in L’Aquila, then also in 2012 in Camp David and currently with the next Presidency, the UK which has indicated that agriculture and food security will remain high on agenda. We shall be sharing our perspectives so that we all speak with one voice. I am sure AGRA also engages a number of partners in favour of African Agriculture. We hope you will continue to play your due role and let’s continue to be open to one another and work as a team. We serve the same constituency: African citizens, communities and nations. The partners who support us and those who support you are all our partners. If African Agriculture does well it is to our credit.

We all appreciate that our collaboration is more in the strategic area of intervention of agriculture and food security but my Department, as I indicated, also deals with sustainable environment and natural resources management. In this connection and with respect to climate change, I would like to say that this is a subject that speaks for itself owing to the frequency and intensity of its impacts in terms of erratic weather patterns punctuated by floods, droughts and other natural disasters. Again, in this area as well, our institutions will have to work closely and productively in supporting our continent and its Member States in building resilience through among others climate smart agriculture and turning them away from emergencies such as those witnessed in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel. Also related to this is that recently we put in place a programme called the African Risk Capacity, an initiative championed by the African Union Commission and specifically the Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture in collaboration with and with support from partners particularly the World Food Programme (WFP). The initiative aims at building the capacity of AU Member States to manage disaster risk and emergency response more effectively by providing timely resources through a Member States-owned mutual insurance company.

In a nutshell, these are some of the areas that I wanted to highlight by way of introduction of my Department as they relate to our partnership with AGRA and we welcome your views on how we can take them forward together in the most efficient and effective way as our Member States need and deserve our services to deliver urgent and concrete actions, results and impacts in all the areas I mentioned. I trust that our partnership can as in the past meet the expectations of our Member States.

The African Union Commission will continue to play its core roles of policy harmonization, partnership building, resource mobilization and advocacy for African causes. This we will do with support of other Pan African institutions, stakeholders and partners including AGRA in the four pillars of peace and security, regional integration, capacity building and shared values. We are right now in the process of developing the new AU Strategic Plan 2014-2017, not just AUC Strategic Plan but Africa-wide Strategic Plan, that will redefine our priorities and at the same time we are working out the vision for the next 50 years. We will appreciate the input of partner institutions like AGRA particularly in your areas of specialisation.

I look forward to our fruitful discussions. Let me now invite you to make your remarks.

Thank you for your attention.