Enablers

A number of enablers have to be in place to achieve the goals of increased agricultural output. Education and extension services alongside research and development are necessary measures. (Photo: K. Foss)

A growing consensus has emerged from the key African and international summits and meetings of recent years that the inter-linked problems of hunger and poverty can best be solved by using a multi-track approach. This involves a multi-pronged attack on hunger and poverty at all levels, which is consistent with the four Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) pillars for increasing African food supply.

According to the African Union, this approach requires "pragmatic public-private sector collaboration in ways that cross the boundaries of traditional ministerial responsibility."  The key tracks include measures for improving agricultural productivity and increasing incomes derived from rural livelihoods (farm and off-farm); targeted safety-net programs that give the neediest and most vulnerable populations direct assistance on their basic needs (whether they be food, basic health care, or access to drinking water); and policies and institutions aimed at empowering farmers and their communities to enable them to climb out and stay out of poverty. The appropriate interventions - scientifically proven and practically demonstrated over decades - have now been compiled by the Millennium Project's Hunger Task Force.

Better harvests
Pedro Sanchez, Director of Tropical Agriculture at Columbia University and Chair of the UN Hunger Task Force, claims African farmers can triple food production by 2015 with just four interventions: nutrients for the soil, (provided by both mineral and organic fertilizers); small-scale irrigation and technologies for collecting rainwater; sturdier, high-yield seeds; and agricultural extension workers to improve farm management and to spread technological innovations at village level.

Basic needs
Safety-net programs involve coupling water management with improvements in access to safe drinking water; roads connecting rural communities to markets; community-based health workers providing basic health services; effective malarial and AIDS/HIV control; and rural small-scale electrification and improved cooking fuels.

Empowerment
African smallhold farmers and women need to be empowered if agriculture is to lift Africa from hunger. Promoting gender equality and empowering women is especially important because women provide most of the labor and increasingly head rural households. This will involve providing access to credit through microfinance, implementing equitable distribution of land to secure ownership or tenancy rights, and ensuring access to scale-neutral techniques suitable for farms of all sizes. At the same time, a vibrant agricultural sector helps to promote economic opportunities for women, allowing them to build assets, increase incomes and improve family welfare- all essential steps to empowerment.

African resolve
When the African Union (AU) assembled in Maputo, Mozambique, in July 2003, it passed the Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security in Africa.
This pledged the AU to "Implement as a matter of urgency, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and flagship projects and evolving Action Plans for agricultural development, at the national, regional and continental levels." To this end, it agreed to adopt sound policies for agricultural and rural development, and commit itself to allocating at least 10% of national budgetary resources for their implementation within five years. 

The CAADP addresses the main challenges of African agriculture through four pillars.

• The expansion of areas of production through the sustainable management of the land and the improvement of water control systems in order to reduce the dependence on rain.
• The improvement of rural infrastructure and market access in order to reduce transaction costs and offer greater competitiveness to agriculture.
• The improvement of national and regional agricultural production, aiming at attaining food security.
• The improvement of research systems and the creation of new agricultural technologies - ensuring their dissemination and use by rural producers with a view to achieving more sustainability of agricultural development in the continent.
  

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