ECA's Office of Programme Coordination (OPC) begins review of three key policy papers on agriculture, water and mineral wealth
By Yinka Adeyemi, Communication Officer,SDD, ECA
08 June 2004

ECA's Office of Programme Coordination (OPC) has begun reviewing three policy papers prepared by the Commission’s Sustainable Development Division (SDD) to assist African countries in responding to key development and growth issues.

The three papers address the problem of food insecurity through an African green revolution; water scarcity and poverty reduction through harnessing of mineral wealth.

In the paper titled "Poverty Reduction, Food Security and the Imperative of a Green Revolution for Africa," SDD argues that increases in agricultural and rural incomes in many African countries are amplified through growth multipliers of the order of 1.5 to 2.7.

"Hence, each additional dollar of rural income would yield another increment of 0.5 to 1.7 dollar (or 50 to 170 per cent) in total income, mainly through expenditure and consumption linkages among agriculture and other sectors of the national economy," SDD says.

The paper notes the successful green revolutions in Africa - notably in North Africa with wheat; Rhodesia and Kenya with maize and in West Africa with cassava and rice - and offers a prescription based on a focus on technologies, infrastructure, institutions and policies (TIIP).

The second paper, "Managing Africa''s Water Resources for Growth and Development" points out that water and sanitation had been found to have the best potential to achieve poverty reduction when integrated within poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs).

It calls on African countries to treat the water sector as a priority in their development plans and identifies the most pressing challenges and potential solutions to them.

To reduce the proportion of people without access to safe water, the paper calls for a policy-shift towards better household water-quality management and improved individual and family hygiene.

It also urges African countries to respond to their food security problems through rainfed and irrigated agriculture. "Africa's policy should be emphatically in favour of expanded irrigation development with a focus on small-scale, farmer-managed systems which have yielded positive results in community empowerment for income generation, improvement of livelihood and poverty reduction," the paper says.

The third paper, “Mainstreaming Mineral Wealth in Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategies” calls on African countries to exploit and manage their mineral resources for growth and poverty reduction.

"Mineral resources are part of the stock of natural capital that Africa has been endowed with, which, if exploited under appropriate conditions can spur development on the continent through foreign exchange earnings, fiscal receipts, local economic development, particularly the provision of social services, public goods and basic infrastructure," the paper says.

It cites a few cases in Africa where mining has fulfilled its potentials - Botswana, Morocco, Namibia and South Africa - but argues that most of Africa has not used its natural resources appropriately to foster development and industrialization.

"Linkages between the natural resources sector and other sectors of the economy are still weak and in most African countries, reliance on mineral resources revenue streams has not spurred development," the SDD paper says.

The OPC review is expected to be concluded within one week.

For more information, please contact Chantal Dupasquier at the ECA.