AGRF 2017: Elevating Agric, Food Security in Africa
The Seventh African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) was held in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, from September 4 to 8 as a premier platform for global and African leaders to develop actionable plans to move African agriculture forward. Abimbola Akosile unveils the
Call it agriculture on the go; call it agrarian week, but for five days in the first week of September, the issue of agriculture in Africa was firmly put on the front-burner in Abidjan, the capital of Cote d’Ivoire.
The Seventh African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) was hosted by President Alassane Ouattara, a continental champion of inclusive agricultural transformation, and his team of senior government officials, including Vice President Daniel Kablan Duncan; Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mamadou Sangafowa Coulibaly, and several other key cabinet members.
The other co-hosts were the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), and the 15 members of the AGRF Partners Group.
Additional resource and technical partnership was provided to the forum by another 10 partners who supported the cost of the forum and its sessions and content, according to the Abidjan communiqué, which contained 25 points.
The forum was attended by as many as 1,300 delegates and high level dignitaries, including President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia; Prime Minister of Togo and Representative of President Faure Gnassingbe, Komi Selom Klassou; former President of Ghana, John Kufuor; former President of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, and former President of Tanzania, Jakaya Kikwete.
Other dignitaries included the President of ECOWAS, the African Union Commissioner for the Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture, eight ministers of agriculture and finance, business leaders, financial institutions, private agribusiness firms, farmers, NGOs, civil society, media, scientists, development partners, technical partners, and the next generation of African agripreneurs and leaders.
Apt Theme The theme of this year’s forum was ‘Accelerating the Path to Prosperity: Growing Inclusive Economies and Jobs through Agriculture.’
This served as the guiding framework for a total of 52 sessions and more than 300 speakers around related topics, particularly youth employment, women in agribusiness, strengthening access to inputs, market access, financial inclusion, the enabling policy environment, and other critical barriers to value chain development and unlocking private sector investment.
The forum was closely aligned with and built heavily upon key global and continental gatherings earlier in the year, including the African Development Bank Annual Meeting, the African Union Summit, the CAADP Partnership Platform Meeting, and the G20 and G7 Summits that have all focused heavily on the creation of jobs for the youth and driving rural development and prosperity through agriculture.
Foundation Report The 2017 African Agriculture Status Report (AASR), entitled The Business of Smallholder Agriculture, once again served to provide a technical foundation and set of key findings and recommendations for the forum.
The report acknowledged the importance of governments working with the free market to drive Africa’s economic growth from food production. It also emphasised the need to substitute imports with high value food made in Africa for a market forecast to be worth more than $1 trillion a year by 2030.
Vital Focus The AGRF 2017 looked at how governments, businesses, and other partners are delivering on the political, policy and financial commitments worth over $30 billion made at the AGRF 2016 in Nairobi, Kenya and the impact this is having on the lives and incomes of farmers and agribusinesses.
The forum benefitted from a series of six thematic working groups driven by the AGRF Partners throughout the year. These included youth, women, inputs, markets, mechanisation, and finance. Results of the year-long engagement included the launch of a toolkit on blended finance released at the forum, strengthened stakeholder communities for the youth and women working groups.
Assessing Progress The forum highlighted considerable progress over the last 12 months against the AGRF 2016 multi-year commitments guided by the nine priority action points contained in the Nairobi communiqué.
The African Union, NEPAD, and countries noted that seven countries have initiated the process of refreshing their investment plans to unlock 10 per cent of public expenditure in agriculture to leverage significant additional resources from the private sector and development partners.
Private sector partners made investments, including OCP’s $2.4 billion fertiliser plant in Ethiopia, with further plants planned in Rwanda, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria.
KCB working with the MasterCard Foundation launched a $30 million partnership to promote financial inclusion for at least two million smallholder farmers in Kenya and Rwanda.
Partners such as the African Development Bank, the Mastercard Foundation, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) advanced innovating financing mechanisms to develop SMEs and increase finance for the continents smallholder farmers. This included work on the Smallholder Agriculture Investment and Finance Network, SAFIN.
Many countries are making progress in developing updated national agricultural strategies and investment plans aligned with expectations under the Malabo declaration. The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations has provided support to a number of countries in the course of the last year, including Kenya, Ghana and the AGRF host country of Cote d’Ivoire.
These and other countries are making progress in identifying and unlocking policy and regulatory bottlenecks critical to boosting agriculture sector growth. In Ethiopia, progress has been made on regulatory updates to enable contract farming, in the removal of a cereal export ban, and reduce restrictions around agricultural inputs and machinery.
In Ghana, the government moved to strengthen the import distribution and subsidy systems. Malawi launched a fertiliser policy regulating fertiliser distribution. Burkina Faso, Ghana and Nigeria strengthened their legal systems to enable private sector involvement in the seed and fertiliser sectors.