Agriculture, trade and market access
Several agencies and programmes of the United Nations have
been involved in the development and implementation of the
Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme, the
centrepiece of the NEPAD food and agriculture plan. Organized
under the umbrella of the Programme’s Support Group,
the agencies and programmes include mainly the World Food
Programme (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organization of
the United Nations (FAO), the World Bank and the International
Fund for Agricultural Development. The group also includes
African Development Bank. There is a complementary overlap
between the membership of the Support Group, which is chaired
by the NEPAD secretariat, and that of this cluster, which
is convened by FAO.
FAO has provided assistance to the secretariat in the formulation
of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme,
which was endorsed by African Ministers for Agriculture at
a meeting held at FAO headquarters in Rome, in June 2002,
and was approved by the Second Ordinary Assembly of Heads
of State and Government of the African Union, held in Maputo
from 10 to 12 July 2003. That summit also adopted a Declaration
on Agriculture and Food Security, which provided strong political
support to the Programme. Major commitments from the Declaration
include implementing, as a matter of urgency, the Programme
and allocating at least 10 per cent of national budgetary
resources towards the agricultural sector; preparing investment
projects under the Programme for the mobilization of resources;
and establishing regional food reserve systems, including
food stocks, linked to Africa’s own production. As a
follow-up to the Maputo summit, FAO has been supporting the
preparation of national medium-term programmes and the formulation
of investment projects, to which it has committed $7 million
in 49 countries (including $6 million from its own resources
under the technical cooperation programme and close to $1
million from an Italian trust fund).
During the twenty-third Regional Conference for Africa, held
in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 1 to 5 March 2004, FAO
reported on a number of activities which had been carried
out during 2003 in the framework of the implementation of
NEPAD. Those activities included: an initiative to review
and update national agricultural, rural development and food
security strategies and policies; integrating forestry, fisheries
and livestock issues into the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture
Development Programme; implementation of fertilizer production
and use in Africa and the establishment of regional food reserve
systems, including food stocks. During 2003, FAO allocated
approximately $1 million from its technical cooperation programme
to fund three NEPAD activities, namely: advisory support to
the NEPAD secretariat; incorporating forestry, fisheries and
livestock sectors in the NEPAD-Comprehensive Africa Agriculture
Development Programme; and assistance for the establishment
of a common market for basic food products.
WFP and the NEPAD secretariat have signed a memorandum of
understanding identifying areas for cooperation, which include
food security and livelihood protection, school feeding and
basic education; nutrition; mother-and-child health; HIV/AIDS;
vulnerability analysis; emergency needs assessment; contingency
planning; emergency preparedness and response; and national
and regional capacity building.
WFP and the NEPAD secretariat are now working together to
develop implementation plans in line with the memorandum of
understanding. Pending finalization of the implementation
plans, the Partnership and WFP are moving forward on school
feeding and food-reserve systems, the two high-profile activities
selected for early action. WFP and the Millennium Hunger Task
Force agreed to launch a pilot programme called “Home-Grown
School Feeding”, which is designed to stimulate local
production through the purchase of locally produced food.
Smallholder farmers will be given the opportunity and initial
assistance to supply food products to schools. WFP and NEPAD
envisage cooperating with FAO and pilot countries. A joint
concept paper has been prepared to help Governments to plan
for implementation of the programme at the national level.
WFP is also participating in a study on food crisis emergency
response and preparedness.
The World Bank has provided support to the implementation
the Multi-country Agricultural Productivity Programme for
Africa, which aims to double research and development on agriculture
in Africa.
In 2003, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD) report on Economic Development in Africa had as its
theme trade performance and commodity dependence.3 The report
placed in perspective the reasons for Africa’s poor
trade performance and declining shares in world trade, along
with the associated problems of commodity dependence and discussed
factors influencing the continent’s ability to diversify
into more market-dynamic products. According to the report,
the majority of African countries are hemmed into a trading
structure that subjects them to secular terms-of-trade losses
and volatile foreign exchange earnings. This position severely
constrains effective macroeconomic management and stunts capital
formation, hampering efforts to diversify into more productive
activities and adding to the debt overhang. As a result, and
despite years under structural adjustment programmes, much
of sub-Saharan Africa has remained commodity-dependent.
The report called for a three-pronged response to easing
the short-run burden of commodity dependence and facilitating
longer-run structural changes, by combining measures to strengthen
domestic institutional capacities with more balanced international
trading arrangements and more generous and innovative international
financing schemes. It also recommended that new markets be
tapped, including through enhancing South-South trade, particularly
in non-traditional commodities which have high-income elasticity
and lower rates of protection, and increasing exports to emerging
markets. Finally, it underscored the necessity for enhancing
intra-African trade, which is one of the main objectives of
NEPAD.
The Joint Integrated Technical Assistance Programme to Selected
Least Developed and Other African Countries (JITAP) is an
integrated trade capacity building response of the International
Trade Centre, UNCTAD and the World Trade Organization to assist
in the effective and beneficial integration of African countries
into the international trading system. The 16 African countries
benefiting from the second phase of the programme are: Benin,
Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire,
Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal,
Tunisia, Uganda, the United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia.
Assistance was provided to JITAP countries in their preparations
for the Fifth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization,
held in Cancún, Mexico, from 10 to 14 September 2003
and participation in the Doha work programme. In July 2003,
a high-level workshop of the inter-institutional committees
in preparation for the Conference was held in Geneva for capital-based
senior trade officials, trade negotiators and other stakeholders,
primarily members of the inter-institutional committees, from
the 16 JITAP countries. Upon the request of JITAP countries,
technical advisory services were provided to assist the inter-institutional
committees in Kenya, Malawi, Tunisia, Uganda, the United Republic
of Tanzania and Zambia on issues on the Doha work programme,
particularly in agriculture, non-agricultural market access
and services, which also contributed to strengthening national
preparations for the Cancún conference. Pledges to
the JITAP Trust Fund to date amount to $11.7 million, representing
92 per cent of the total programme budget of $12.7 million.
The cash allocation as at 1 January 2004 amounts to approximately
US$ 2.1 million against a budget estimate of $4.3 million
for 2004.
The International Monetary Fund continues to advocate in
various forums greater access to industrial country markets
for Africa, including in particular the elimination of agricultural
subsidies in industrial countries. It has called for a timely
conclusion of the Doha Round, highlighting the importance
of a successful outcome for the world economy and announced
in Cancún a trade initiative that would tailor Fund
support specifically to meet the needs of countries for which
a multilateral agreement could generate temporary balance
of payments pressures. Despite the absence of a clear positive
result so far, the Fund continues to emphasize the benefits
of trade liberalization, both unilateral and multilateral,
including the elimination of agricultural subsidies. The Fund
would provide financial support in the context of new or existing
arrangements to members facing near-term negative impacts
on their balance of payments from the round; it would also
offer additional financial help where the actual impact of
trade liberalization in a multilateral context turned out
to be greater than anticipated.
The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)
has launched the African Productive Capacity Initiative to
be implemented within the framework of NEPAD. The Initiative
will gradually integrate the current UNIDO integrated programmes
in Africa, which would become the national pillars of the
respective subregional Initiative, will help to identify the
comparative advantages of regions, countries and products
in Africa, using the global and local value chains approach,
as well as enhance South-South cooperation. It is envisaged
that the Initiative will become the industrial component of
NEPAD, and a new cluster on productive capacity development,
diversification of production and regional integration should
be established.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is currently
implementing a NEPAD preliminary assistance project which
is aimed at assisting African countries to identify and formulate
a project document in the telecommunication and information
and communication technology sector which would be used for
sourcing funding to implement such projects. To this effect,
ITU has allocated approximately $580,000 under its Telecom
Surplus Programme, as an initial move to support African countries’
efforts in implementing the NEPAD vision. Moreover, ITU and
the European Union are jointly implementing a $995,000 project
aimed at supporting the Economic Community of West African
States countries to establish an integrated information and
communication technology market in West Africa in order to
foster the development of related networks.
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Agriculture,
Trade and Market Access