The Foresight Africa reveals the shocking reality of agriculture and food security, particularly about the progress of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP): "only 5 out of 55 African countries currently on track to reduce undernutrition to 5 percent or less by 2025," and "only seven countries are on track to meet the CAADP goal of doubling agricultural productivity by 2025."
In 2003, African leaders committed to increase the allocation of the national budgets directed to the agricultural sector to at least 10 percent and to achieve 6 percent annual growth in agricultural productivity by 2015. In 2014, these commitments were emphasized into seven commitments in the Malabo Declaration, including ending hunger by 2025 by at least doubling agricultural productivity.
The agricultural sector in Africa faces several challenges, which were largely discussed in different publications and studies. The effects of climate change worsen the lack of agricultural financing, inefficient governance, and inadequate farming techniques. It is important to emphasize the efforts led by each national government with the international donors, technical partners, and NGOs to address these issues. Despite these efforts, the results have been modest, even disappointed. What went wrong?
The perspective was not to add new scientific or technical approaches but to look at certain aspects that many actors may fail to observe. In a fragile state, where national security becomes the top priority, the government has limited choices or even no choices when it comes to the allocation of resources. The changing priorities also may affect other countries, but for different reasons, non-security related. We are wondering whether these countries are keeping their commitments or not. In addition, to navigate the resource scarcity, governance, accountability, implementation, and monitoring of agricultural programs must be emphasized. African countries have their agricultural policies, most of them have clear objectives and approaches. How was the implementation of these policies? What corrections and adjustments were made when issues arise? These are legitimate questions that everyone should pay attention to. The truth is there is a gap between the written policy and its implementation.
The issues related to program/project implementation, monitoring, and government accountability affect progress in the agricultural sector. The practicality of project implementation also should be reviewed for public-funded projects. The absence of project measurements at the unit level, village, or areas, coupled with the lack of program monitoring makes the adjustments impossible. Often, the government has a clear written agricultural policy but demonstrates weaknesses in implementation and follow-up. Lastly, the coordination and harmonization between donor-funded projects and the government policy should be reviewed closely. That should not remain at the written-document level, but also at the field-implementation level. Thus, having a written-policy and monitoring its implementation is equally paramount.