African agriculture is seen as a key part of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) in terms of its role in achieving economic advancement and poverty alleviation, said Nepad secretariat agricultural adviser Dr Richard Mkandawire, a citizen of Malawi, on Monday.
Nepad is an African Union (AU) programme meant to enable the socio-economic development of Africa in partnership with the rest of the world, in particular the G8 industrialised nations.
The programme’s key priorities are peace, security, democracy, good political governance as well as good economic and corporate governance.
In the area of agriculture, Nepad’s priorities are food security and fostering greater intra-African trade in agricultural goods, said Mkandawire at an agricultural conference in Midrand near Johannesburg.
The Nepad vision for agriculture, by 2015, is to attain food security, improve the productivity of agriculture, create dynamic African agricultural markets, integrate African farmers into the market economy and for Africa to become a net exporter of agricultural products.
A recent Nepad agricultural programme is the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), put in place in 2002.
This programme was prepared by Nepad with the support of the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.
“The pillars of CAADP are sustainable land management and reliable water control systems. Another pillar is to increase food supply and decrease hunger as well as promoting agricultural research and technology. A further pillar is to improve rural infrastructure and market access,” Mkandawire said. A CAADP action plan was put in place in April.
Some of the programme’s immediate interventions are in disaster prevention and emergency responses to food crises, HIV/Aids and encouraging African governments to increase their investments in the agricultural sector, Mkandawire said. – I-Net Bridge