Events

Press release Nº308/2014

African Union Agribusiness Forum calls for the Acceleration of Private Sector Development in Agriculture
Kigali, Rwanda – 6 November 2014: The African Union has called for an accelerated implementation of efforts to engage the private sector community in identifying and seizing opportunities for their increased participation in the development of agricultural value chains in Africa in the process of sustaining the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).
Speaking at the official opening of the 2nd African Union Private Sector and Agribusiness Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, today Her Excellency Mrs Tumusiime Rhoda Peace, Commissioner for Rural Economy & Agriculture of the African Union Commission reiterated the timeliness of the 2nd Private Sector Forum in the process of developing an Implementation Strategy and Roadmap that will spell out specific roles which the private sector will commit to undertake in advancing the implementation of the Malabo Commitment as part of “Sustaining the CAADP Momentum”.
‘‘Women and youth must be at the centre of the planning and operations of the private sector engagement in African agriculture transformation.” she stressed (the full speech of the Commissioner is available on www.au.int).

Declaring the Forum opened, The Rwandan Minister for Agriculture and Animal Resources, Gerardine Mukeshimana, recalled that the Rwandan government’s commitment to taking private sector investments to heights and scale that will demonstrate positive impact on the lives of the people.
“We believe that the solutions, ideas and voices must be brought to the table if we are to achieve a future that is bright for all.” Speaking further, The Honorable Minister stated “We all believe in the power of collaboration with other organizations – for we are stronger and more effective when we work together and bring our collective best to bear. That I think is the ultimate intention of this gathering.”
Following the African Union Commission (AUC) declaration of the year 2014 as the ‘Year of Agriculture and Food Security’ and the 10th anniversary of CAADP, emphasis has been placed on the role of the private sector as a central catalyst and driver of inclusive agribusiness development for sustainable agricultural growth.
As part of the process to support the deepened engagement of the private sector in CAADP, the AUC and the NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency (NPCA) have continuously engaged the private sector and agribusiness stakeholders to identify ways and means through which the contribution of this critical stakeholder group can be expanded, coordinated and made more effective in contributing to the agricultural development in the continent through CAADP.
The Forum is expected to provide an opportunity for the private sector to contribute towards this process and agree on a roadmap for domestic/private sector to deliver on Malabo Commitments on Africa Accelerated Agricultural Growth & Transformation within the Implementation Strategy and Roadmap framework. Also, the Forum will establish institutional structures for coordination of the domestic private sector actors at regional and continental level.

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For more information contact:

Mr. Komla Bissi, CAADP Pillar II Senior Advisor, African Union Commission
E-mail: Bissik@africa-union.org

For Media Contact and interview request:

Mr. Molalet Tsedeke, Directorate of Information and Communication, AU Commission
molalett@africa-union.org; +256781524245

For further information contact
Directorate of Information and Communication | African Union Commission I E-mail: dinfo@african-union.org I Web Site: www.au.int I Addis Ababa | Ethiopia
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Addressing losses and waste across the food chain should be a critical pillar of national agricultural strategies

Johannesburg, South Africa - 22 October, 2014: “Enhanced coordination among stakeholders is key to implementing the Malabo Declaration on halving Post Harvest Losses by 2025, says AUC Head of Rural Economy at the Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture, Dr. Janet Edeme.
She was speaking at the opening of the African Union Commission (AUC) and Food Agriculture Organization high-level consultative meeting on Post Harvest Losses (PHL), organized to develop specific actions for addressing PHL within the framework of the Implementation Strategy and Roadmap for the Malabo Declaration on Agriculture and also to propose specific actions for implementing the recommendations on PHL reduction in the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) National and Regional Agriculture and Food Security Investment Plans.
Dr. Edeme reiterated the AUC’s commitment to prioritize the formulation of concrete and deliverable actions to combat PHL in response to the Malabo declaration.
She noted that the AU Heads of State and Government in their 2014 Malabo Declaration on Agriculture committed to reducing PHL as they realized it was very critical for achieving the continental agricultural transformation goals and targets.
“This commitment by Africa’s leaders means we have the political mandate to come up with specific and concrete actions to halve the current level of PHL by 2025. We are also coming up with a roadmap to implement the Malabo declaration; so this is a chance to feed into the roadmap,” Dr. Edeme said.
FAO Representative for South Africa, Dr. Tobias Takavarasha said, “In Africa, food losses are significantly higher than those considered acceptable or unavoidable for efficiently functioning food supply chains.’’
He said total quantitative food loss in Africa, south of the Sahara had been estimated at 100 million metric tones per year. He however emphasized that food loss and waste is a global phenomenon not restricted to the African continent hence the need for a global coordinated support.
Dr. Takavarasha quoted the FAO report, ‘Global food losses and food waste’ which, states that roughly one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year, approximately 1.3 billion tones gets lost or wasted. Food losses and waste amount to roughly USD 680 billion in industrialized countries and USD 310 billion in developing countries.
He said that the need, therefore for interventions to reduce PHL become even more imperative when the environmental impact of losses, loss in nutritional value and market opportunities, as well as the possible adverse effects on the health of populations consuming poor quality products, are taken into consideration.
The two day event has brought together, African Government representatives, Regional Economic Communities, Civil Society, Private Sector, Farmer organizations and development partners.
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CJ/Mts.
For more information contact:

AUC
Mr. Komla Bissi
E-mail: Bissik@africa-union.org

FAO
Ms. Stepanka Gallatova
Email: Stepanka.Gallatova@fao.org

For further information contact
Directorate of Information and Communication | African Union Commission I E-mail: DIC@african-union.org I Web Site: www.au.int I Addis Ababa | Ethiopia
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Face book: https://www.facebook.com/AfricanUnionCommission
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Inspiring Agricultural Change
Sharefair on Rural Women’s Technologies to
Improve Food Security, Nutrition, and Productive Family Farming

On the 15-17 October 2014 in Nairobi, Kenya, a Sharefair on Rural Women’s Technologies for Productive Family Farming will take place to share and showcase agricultural production and value-addition innovations. The intent is for smallholders in the East and Southern Africa region to display their technologies and learn from one another as well as get the opportunity to interact with entrepreneurs, financial sector representatives and policy makers.
Two high-level panel discussions are envisioned to take place during the Sharefair to enhance knowledge and experience sharing. The first panel will focus on Gender and Rural Technologies to coincide with Rural Women’s Day 15 October, while the second one will explore Food Security, Nutrition and Gender to coincide with World Food Day 16 October. The targeted audience is an invited guest list of high-level panelists, including Regional Directors for UN and international organizations, and interested attendees at the Sharefair.
The expected format will be a two-hour long interactive “town hall” panel. After a 15-minute introduction by the African Union (proposed/TBC), four expert panelists will present a statement each (total 60 minutes). There will then be the opportunity to interact with the audience through a Q&A session (45 minutes). A seasoned expert moderator will facilitate the session to ensure interaction, encourage participation, coordinate input and ensure a lively debate.
Panel 1 – “Gender and Rural Technologies”

Women are responsible for almost half of the world’s food production and in some developing countries they make up 60 percent of the agricultural labour force. Yet women are less likely to own land, and when they do, they are likely to own less than men and of poorer quality. Women receive only a fraction of the credit made available to the agricultural sector. They are rarely consulted in the solutions being under-represented in decision-making. Women farmers are less likely than men to use modern inputs such as improved seeds, fertilizers, pest control measures and mechanical tools. Many studies show that yields on plots managed by women are lower than those managed by men, as women simply do not have access to the same inputs. If they did, their yields would be the same as men’s, they would produce more and overall agricultural production would increase. The estimated yield gaps ranged widely but many clustered around 20-30 percent, with an average of
25 percent. Thus, closing the gap could increase agricultural output in the developing world by 2.5-4 percent, on average.
One critical bottleneck is rural women’s limited access and exposure to new technologies. Indeed, a recent IFPRI report (2014) noted that agricultural technologies could increase global crop yield as much as 67 percent and cut food prices nearly in half by 2050. Technology options are many, but transparent evidence-based information to support decisions on the potential of alternative technologies is relatively scarce. Additionally, information needs to be shared on adequate technologies to exploit the potential of rural women (SOFA, 2011).
This panel will serve as a platform to share and discuss opportunities and challenges in women’s access to and use of technologies. It will involve exploring how to best increase agricultural productivity and value addition in a sustainable and equal way, at policy and practical level, through these technologies. The emerging role of the private sector will also be analyzed to examine their role in creating incentives. The potential of young people in contributing to the development of feasible innovations for scaling up will also be discussed.
Proposed panelists include representatives from Private Sector/Business, Academia, Research, and a Farmer/Practitioner. Proposed moderator is Ms. Zainab Badawi, BBC Presenter/Journalist.
Panel 2 – “Food Security, Nutrition and Gender”

Women in the developing world hold the key to building sustainable solutions to free themselves, their families and their communities from food insecurity. As mothers, farmers, teachers and entrepreneurs, women can – if provided with the right nutrition, education, job training and health care – break the cycle of hunger and live lives free of the burden of malnutrition. If we look at women’s rights and gender equity through the prism of food security and nutrition, we can see how the malnutrition of women and girls stems from political, economic and social inequality. Malnutrition is a marker of both our failure to extend rights for women and to achieve development.
Women and girls represent about 60 percent of the 842 million chronically undernourished people in our world. Undernutrition among mothers and children is the underlying cause of 2.5 million deaths each year. These nutrition facts are incompatible with the fact that women produce most of the developing world’s food, provide roughly 50 percent of agricultural labour, and they represent almost two-thirds of the world’s poor livestock keepers.
It is of critical to take steps to address the structural causes of gender inequality and eliminate the barriers to the empowerment of women. We must ensure women’s access to training, and resources, including financing. Women are empowered when they gain control over their own life and gain power to make choices. In addition to increases in production and income, closing the gender gap in agriculture would generate broader social and economic benefits by strengthening women’s direct access to, and control over, resources and incomes. Increasing agricultural production by 2.5-3 percent by closing the gender gap could reduce the number of undernourished people by 12-17 percent. When women control additional income, they spend more of it than men do on food, health, clothing and education for their children. This has positive implications for immediate well-being as well as long-term human capital formation and economic growth through improved health, nutrition and education outcomes.
This panel will serve as a platform to discuss women’s role in food security and nutrition in order to identify specific challenges and opportunities, and ways to use them to improve food security and nutrition across the board.
Proposed panelists include representatives from Nutrition, Government, Academia, Research, and a Farmer/Practitioner. Proposed moderator is Mr. Cheikh Sourang, IFAD.

JOINT PRESS RELEASE
Recent expansion of Africa’s agricultural trade bodes well for food security, resilience
October 8, 2014—Addis Ababa, Ethiopia—Africa’s share of world agricultural trade has increased in recent years after decades of decline, and trade among African countries has been on the rise. Both trends have boosted Africans’ ability to access food and distribute it to the neediest during hard times, according to a report released today at the annual Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (ReSAKSS) conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The conference, which focuses on this finding and others from the 2013 Africa-wide Annual Trends and Outlook Report (ATOR), is organized by the African Union Commission (AUC), in partnership with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

Conference delegates will discuss the importance of improved agricultural trade performance and competitiveness to enhancing the resilience of the poor and vulnerable. They will review the latest evidence tracking Africa’s agricultural progress against key Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) indicators. They will also discuss countries’ progress toward evidence-based policy planning and implementation through the establishment and operation of Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support Systems (SAKSS) platforms and the strengthening of mutual accountability through regular and comprehensive agriculture joint sector reviews.

The report found that Africa’s agricultural exports accounted for 3.3 percent of world agricultural trade in 2009-2013, up from 1.2 percent in 1996-2000. While still small, the jump represents a threefold increase. Moreover, Africa’s agricultural exports have quadrupled in value terms and doubled in caloric terms. And the share of intra-African trade has doubled: nearly 34 percent of agricultural exports originating from African countries now go to other African countries.

The findings are significant because agricultural trade in general, and intra-African trade, in particular, can be a critical element to ensuring that the poor and vulnerable are able to remain resilient in the face of economic shocks and severe weather events.

“While the situation is far different from that of the 1960s, when African countries dominated global markets, the recent performance indicates that Africa can become a major player again,” said Ousmane Badiane, Director for Africa at IFPRI. ”Now countries need to sustain the policies and institutional reforms and scale up the investments that made this change possible.”

The report attributed Africa’s growing share of world agricultural exports to improvements in trade infrastructure, such as telecommunications, success in integrating global and regional markets through preferential trade agreements, improved economic growth, and an increase in world prices of some raw materials.

It also found that diversity of crops had helped boost trade. At the end of the 1990s, the top 10 agricultural exports made up 51 percent of Africa’s total agricultural exports. Since then, African agricultural exports have become more diversified and more competitive, so that by 2010, the top 10 agricultural exports accounted for 40 percent of total exports.

Fueled by both economic growth and population growth, agricultural imports have risen considerably faster than exports. As a result, the agricultural trade deficit rose from less than US$1 billion to nearly $40 billion. This highlights the tremendous challenge facing African countries and the need to deepen the reforms and scale up the efforts that have accelerated exports over the last 10years.

“The renewed commitment in Malabo by African heads of state and government to redouble efforts to boost competitiveness and trade, in global as well as intra-African markets, could not have come at a better time,” said Abebe H. Gabriel, Director of theDepartmentof Rural Economy and Agriculture at the AUC. “It is a step in the right direction.”

The report’s findings show that African countries have become more competitive in regional markets and that faster growth of demand in these markets has also contributed positively to trade performance by African countries. The findings also show that decreasing barriers to regional trade would further boost the recent growth of intra-African trade and allow countries to take advantage of the stabilizing effects that often accompany expanded regional trade. Domestic food markets can be stabilized by expanding regional trade to buffer shocks to individual countries. Regional trade can help mitigate the effects of weather shocks in any one country. The report shows that about 40 percent of the time over the last 30 years (four out of every ten years), the impact of losses in maize production due to drought might have been mitigated by trade.

Trade policies should be aimed at reducing transport and other transaction costs and increasing agricultural productivity to improve the livelihoods of the poor and vulnerable and enhance their resilience to shocks. For instance, the report notes that, in the case of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) countries, reducing overall trading costs by 10 percent would raise regional cereals exports by about 20 percent on average over the next 15 years. The impact would be at least 2.5 times that much in the case of major staples such as roots and tubers. Raising yields by the same magnitude would have an even bigger impact on regional exports, with increases of at least 30-40 percent across nearly all commodities. Specifically, the report recommends that governments should:

• Expand markets with better transport infrastructure to make it easier to move crops from surplus to deficit zones;
• Invest in science and technology to raise agricultural productivity and enhance the capacity of domestic agricultural sectors to supply local markets and adjust to shocks;
• Eliminate nontariff cross-border barriers to foster market integration at the domestic, regional, and international levels; and
• Invest in social safety net programs and adopt more conducive policies to mitigate the potential destabilizing effects of trade while maximizing its positive short- and long-term benefits for growth and food security.
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For more information, please contact:
Addis Tigabu, a.tigabu@cgiar.org, +251 (91) 1963570
Carol Jilombo, Jilomboc@africa-union.org
Molalet Tsedeke, molalett@africa-union.org

A series of events focusing on food and nutrition security including Food Commemoration of the 5th Africa Day for Food and Nutrition Security
October
Venue TBD