Develop regional agric projects — Trust Africa
The Executive Director of Trust Africa, Dr Tendai Murisa, has called on governments across Africa to work within their regional economic blocs to put up infrastructural projects necessary to boost agricultural productivity.
He said countries in West Africa, for instance, could harness their strength as ECOWAS to create fertiliser production centres that would feed the entire region, and added that that would be better for the region by retaining the value of the investments.
Dr Murisa told a small group of select journalists in Accra on the sidelines of a capacity-building programme for agriculture advocacy that putting up agricultural infrastructure owned by Africans, either through their own private sector or governments would help retain some of the investments on the continent.
Capacity-building workshop
Send-Ghana, a civil society organisation which advocates more attention to smallholder farmers, organised the workshop which was on the theme, “Strengthening the Advocacy Movement for Equitable Agriculture in Africa.”
It was organised with its partner, Trust Africa, which is coordinating the advocacy for equitable agriculture in Africa.
Dr Murisa’s call was in response to concerns that multinational input companies benefited the most from agricultural investments even in times of food crisis. This is because the multinationals are the biggest actors in agriculture, in terms of revenues and investments.
Africa has signed different international and regional protocols, especially around the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), which have liberalised the market. These have also totally transformed agriculture on the continent from a highly subsidised area to one driven by the logic of the market.
Since the 2003 Maputo Declaration, which culminated in Malawi 2014, African countries committed to commit investments of at least a minimum of 10 per cent of their annual budgets into agriculture. However, since only a few African countries have the capacity to produce own inputs such as fertilisers and improved seeds, they mainly import from countries and multinationals.
“It is the same with seeds, as Africa does not own patents on improved seeds. Majority of the seeds used in Africa are, therefore, owned by about seven companies,” Dr Murisa stated.
For such infrastructural investments, Dr Murisa believes long-term lending multilateral agencies would be prepared to come on board to fund such projects.
“If we are really serious about turning around smallholder farming, we have to focus on those capital investments,” he stressed.
The Trust Africa executive director also wants African countries to focus on affordable mechanisation approaches to move agriculture from the subsistence level the way it had been, saying: “It is really backward at the moment. We need to invest in the low-cost technology.”
Proposal
Trust Africa also wants smallholder farmers, the unions and the NGOs to help track investments channelled to agriculture to ensure that funds go directly into activities that would benefit the sector rather than being used for the payment of the salaries of officials and bureaucrats, overheads and luxury vehicles.
“Africa’s challenge with agriculture is not about the lack of policies, but it’s the implementation to create capacities. So the capital investments by governments should be tracked as the starting point,” he stated.
Workshop
A Project Officer at SEND-Ghana, Ms Aisha Mohamed, explained that the workshop was to enable Trust Africa to partner organisations to take stock of their advocacy activities for the past year and chart the way forward. The over 20 participants were drawn from Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Uganda and South Africa.
Send-Ghana has since its establishment worked closely with smallholder farmers, engaging them to understand their challenges and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture MoFA, on the other hand. Its engagements with (MoFA) has over the years helped to influence some policies that benefit smallholder farmers.
The civil society organisation also tracks the budget with respect to agriculture and explains opportunities under it to smallholder farmers to take advantage of.
“We have partnered MoFA in providing stakeholder insights into policy implementation and succeeded in using very civil ways to influence some of the policies of the ministry to favour the smallholder farmer,” Ms Mohamed said.