Looking to the future: African’s agricultural transformation

ONE Campaign on the 29^th January 2014 launched their Do Agric, It Pays campaign to urge African leaders to commit to spending 10% of national budgets on agriculture, a commitment 54 African countries agreed to in 2003 but only 8 followed through on. Building on the 2014 African Union Year of Agriculture and Food Security, the campaign is drawing on evidence that greater investment in agriculture could “help lift 85 million people out of extreme poverty by 2024, provide jobs, and boost the continent’s economy”.

Alongside the launch of this campaign, ONE have also published a new report, Ripe for Change: The Promise of Africa’s Agricultural Transformation, which discusses the need for reform of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), a package of policies developed to transform agriculture in Africa and accelerate economic development.

Despite having experienced steady and positive economic growth at an average of 5% per year, Africa desperately needs accelerated economic development if it is to cope with rapid population growth. The African population is projected to quadruple over the next 90 years. The role of agriculture in stimulating inclusive economic growth is significant. The World Bank calculated that agricultural growth is 2.5 times more likely to reduce poverty than growth in any other sector. In sub-Saharan Africa agricultural growth is 11 times more effective at reducing poverty.

To capitalise on agriculture’s potential to stimulate economic development, African governments in 2003 at the African Union Summit in Maputo, Mozambique, agreed to spend 10% of national budgets on agriculture and to achieve at least 6% average annual growth in the national agricultural sector. Under CAADP, governments agreed to develop country-specific agricultural development plans.

ONE 2013 DATA Report: Financing the Fight for Africa’s Transformation

Content for this blog is taken from here, authored by Ben Leo, Global Policy Director at ONE.

Ahead of the G8 summit on the 17th and 18th June, the ONE campaign published their 2013 Data Report, which focuses on tracking how developing countries are progressing on the Millennium Development Goal targets using the ‘MDG Progress Index’.   The report also measures how sub-Saharan African governments are faring against their own spending commitments in three poverty-busting sectors: health, agriculture and education. Finally, it offers recommendations for how the global community can intensify its efforts in a sprint to the MDG finish line.

The report shows that some significant progress is happening.

• There are 10 sub-Saharan African MDG ‘trailblazers’ and dozens of countries have improved their performance.
• Sub-Saharan African resource flows have quadrupled since 2000, including domestic government expenditures, which account for almost 80% of all available finance. Domestic revenues, foreign investment, donor assistance and remittances are all playing an important role in boosting growth and development.
• Countries that allocate more of their budget to health, agriculture and education are, on average, progressing faster on the MDGs. For example, over the last decade, Burkina Faso spent a whopping 52% of its national budget on these three sectors and is currently on track to achieve four MDG targets (out of eight) and partially on track for another two.

But also areas that need considerable work.

• Some countries are falling behind on the MDG targets and slowing down regional progress. Nine of the fourteen global ‘laggard’ countries are in sub-Saharan Africa.
• African governments are falling far short of their own spending targets, and this has very real consequences. Take a large country such as Nigeria, which alone accounts for 11% of annual child deaths – if it were to meet its health spending commitment over the next three years, the additional resources could amount to $22.5 billion. This could pay for vaccinations for every single child, anti-malarial bed nets for every citizen, and treatment for every HIV-positive person, saving millions of lives.
• Many donors are also off track in delivering on their promises, such as reaching aid levels of 0.7% of GNI by 2015 and delivering half of those increases to Africa. While aid flows rose dramatically from 2000 to 2010, we have now seen two consecutive years of decline, and, shockingly, sub-Saharan Africa is bearing the brunt of these cuts.