CAADP Technical Networks: Building Capacity for Africa’s Agricultural Development

Event Date: May 04, 2017
Time: 09:30 AM to 11:00 AM (GMT -5)
Event Links: Webinar Recording
Information
In order to carry out key commitments of the Malabo Declaration to transform agriculture across Africa, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) is dedicated to strengthening technical capacity among implementers.
Join our upcoming webinar where presenters will discuss the vision of the CAADP Technical Networks and answer key questions about the communities of practice, including what the Networks are, how they deliver regional, national and continental support and ways you can collaborate.
Whether you're a technical agency currently supporting or interested in supporting Africa’s agricultural development, a development partner seeking to invest in African Union (AU) member states' priorities or a CAADP implementer seeking capacity development support, this webinar will provide important information on how to engage and support African agricultural transformation.
Register now!
CAADP Technical Networks: Building Capacity for Africa’s Agricultural Development

Godfrey Bahiigwa is the Director of the African Union’s Department for Rural Economy (DREA) based in Addis Ababa. DREA works with AU Member States’, Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and other partners to boost rural... more economic development and agricultural productivity by supporting the adoption of measures, strategies, policies and programmes on agriculture. Since 2013, Bahiigwa was the Office Head for IFPRI’s Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Before that, he spent 15 years working with national and international research and policy organizations as a researcher and a practitioner. He has extensive working on the Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (ReSAKSS) and the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) at all levels. He was the founding coordinator of ReSAKSS Eastern and Central Africa (while based at ILRI) and later oversaw ReSAKSS across Africa while working at IFPRI. Prior to joining IFPRI, he was the director of Uganda’s Plan for Modernization of Agriculture (PMA) and was the CAADP focal person. He also supported the CAADP process in many countries in Africa. Bahiigwa holds a PhD in agricultural economics from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a Master’s degree in agricultural and applied economics from the University of Minnesota. less

Jeff Hill has many years of experience in African agricultural development and currently serves in USAID's Bureau for Food Security (BFS). He started his career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone and later served as... more Associate Peace Corps Director in that country. Prior to USAID, he worked for the World Bank for 10 years in Tanzania and Nigeria. At USAID he has been a team leader for a number of agriculture and food security initiatives for the Africa Bureau and now for BFS. He presently works on Feed the Future initiatives, and prior to that worked on many programs that promoted agricultural growth and built on African-led partnerships to cut hunger and poverty. He has designed, led, and managed a variety of teams on research, private sector development, trade, capacity building and policy. He holds a BS from Weber State University in Utah in public administration and an MS from UC Davis in agricultural economics and agronomy. Jeff is serving as the new Chair of the CAADP Development Partners Group, which is the primary platform for donor and assistance coordination at the continental level. less

Cris Muyunda, Vice President of the CAADP Non State Actors Coalition, CNC, and CAADP Technical networks Mentor is a leading agribusiness strategy and development specialist. His key interests are on efforts to ensure the African... more private sector becomes a reliable supplier of safe, quality foods to local, regional and international markets. Dr. Muyunda fully appreciates the opportunity to work with various civil society and other non-state actors to ensure inclusive agro–growth in Africa under the CAADP agenda. Dr. Muyunda serves on the board of the Pan African Agribusiness and Agroindustry Consortium (PanAAC) heading the strategy and partnership stream. Previously, Dr. Muyunda was founding CEO of the Alliance for Commodity Trade in Eastern and Southern Africa (ACTESA), regional CAADP Coordinator for Eastern and Southern Africa and USAID Economic Growth Deputy Director USAID Mission to Zambia. Dr. Muyunda attended university in Zambia and undertook post graduate research in Western Australia, Northern California and State of Pennsylvania, USA and holds a PhD in business competitiveness. less

Greenwell Matchaya is a researcher (Economics) and the Coordinator for the Regional Strategy Analysis and Knowledge Support Systems (ReSKASS-SA) for the Southern African region. Prior to joining IWMI, Greenwell worked at the... more School of Agricultural Policy and Development- University of Reading-UK, where he focused on exploring the nexus between agricultural policy, intellectual property rights, agricultural research and investment. Before joining the University of Reading, he worked at the Leeds University Business School (UK) where his areas of research ranged from agricultural policy, macro-economic policy and health reforms evaluation. He also served as an honorary searcher in economics at the University of Wisconsin- Madison in the United States. He has vast experience/expertise in quantitative analysis (econometrics) and at present, his interests are in the broad area of economics of development focusing on agricultural public and private expenditures, property rights, agricultural water, international trade and how these affect economic development. He has a PhD in Economics from Leeds University-UK (he did part of his doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the USA), and further holds an MSc in Resource and Development Economics from UBM-Oslo (Norway), and an MA in Economics from the Leeds University in the UK. less
Comments
Given the public release of the USAID 2018 budget and the rumors of “re-structuring” USAID, I wonder how this great initiative (CAADP) will survive. How and what the academic and research community can help? I hope the coming Webinar can address the future direction of CAADP.
The Malabo Declaration resolves that current agricultural productivity levels must at least double by the year 2025 [Section III, 3, a)] and that trade in agricultural commodities and services must treble [Section V. 5. a)]. It also recommits to the idea of not only implementation at country level but also to “regional coordination and harmonization”. [Section I. 1. e)]
Creation of a uniform, level, continent-wide trade platform is a critical issue, and to do this the pests and pathogens that affect trade must be effectively controlled. It makes sense create control programs on the basis a regional or production-ecosystem perspective rather than a nation-by-nation basis and the Regional Economic Communities (“RECs”, as per Malabo) have such capabilities.
The arm of the African Union dealing with livestock is the Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR), and they have implemented a USAID funded project called “Standard Methods and Procedures in Animal Health”. It creates an approach to control of trade-sensitive animal diseases that enhances cooperation and uniformity among the nations of the IGAD REC. Each disease has specific protocols for surveillance & epidemiology, diagnostics, disease control, disease reporting, and risk analysis/mapping. All the nations of the REC subscribe to these measures and cross-border REC-wide cooperation is thereby greatly enhanced. AU-IBAR wants to spread this approach to other RECs of sub-Saharan Africa to create a uniform disease control system that then supports a level trading platform throughout the entire region.
It seems to me that this approach, in support of the Malabo Declaration, could be taken for any agricultural commodity. A regionalized or production-ecosystem structure that unites nations in control of pests and pathogens reduces probability for reintroduction of disease, eliminates redundancy, shares resources of laboratory diagnostics and pest identification, allows for cooperative programming, and efficiently allocates personnel expertise.
United Nations projections indicate that by the year 2100, Africa’s population will have grown by 3.7 times and the continent will house 39% of total world population. Malabo speaks of 2-3X increases in production and trade – but long term, those percentage increases will need to be continued again and again.
Regionalized pest and pathogen control and SPS seem a rational, efficient, and effective mode of approach.
Great initiative- time to focus on the perennial implementation lapse. Appropraite policy support programmes and enhancing the technical capacities of implementers are potent means to revive agriculture-led development in the Continent.