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“We’re actually managing to focus the attention of national governments on agriculture.”
Why has progress been slower on Pillar Frameworks 2 and 3?
The architecture of development has changed. It is now vital that development is home-grown. The thinking process on African development has to start within Africa, not in the offices of the international donor community. This is time-consuming. We need to collect and build up our capacities on many issues. For these to be African-owned frameworks, it's important to have broad-based consultations, not only with government officials, but also with non-governmental organisations, farmers organisations and other key players that have to be involved in the preparation of these frameworks, and with the African institutions that can provide the necessary facilitation. Africa's constituents have to internalise the entire CAADP agenda so that it is African-owned and African-driven. NEPAD, as the mother ship of CAADP, provides overall leadership in this process, and we’re exploring ways in which donors can help us increase our capacities and work through the regional economic communities, or RECs.
What are some of the issues to consider when incorporating the framework documents into national and regional compacts?
Each of the framework documents are intended to guide national governments as they address generic priorities, the key issues at continental level that drive African agriculture. The key NEPAD-related principles, whether regional markets or regional integration, land policy, private sector involvement or the critical bottleneck of insufficient capacity, need to be focused and brought to the fore.
“CAADP is repositioning agriculture at the top of national development agendas.”
How many countries have developed national compacts?
Rwanda is the only one so far, but we reckon there will be 10 national compacts signed by the end of 2008. Before you can sign a compact, you need to complete a range of consultation and analytical work, define the opportunities and investment requirements and formulate a response at country level. This will shape the nature of the compact. What is significant from our end is that we’re actually managing to focus the attention of national governments on agriculture and reposition it at the top of their national development agendas. Rwanda's national compact was a cabinet-level matter, in which the Minister of Finance together signed a compact with the Minister of Agriculture. We'd like to see the same thing happen in other African countries, and between all development partners.
What does peer review look like in agriculture and rural development?
Peer review is not about being judgemental and finding fault with the performance of other countries, but rather a vehicle for mutual learning, within the context of the CAADP Partnership Platform. This is where regional economic communities and national governments, who are already going through the roundtable process share experiences, discuss the challenges and explore opportunities for surmounting obstacles. Peer review is not happening in a very structured way yet, which is why we’d like some of the regional institutions to help develop discussions that are evidence-based and concern technical challenges, and to provide some guidance on how to structure a new African agricultural agenda.
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