MEETING OF EXPERTS ON AGRICULTURE AND WATER
9-10 FEBRUARY 2004
TRIPOLI, LIBYA

 
 

Concept Note on the Extra-Ordinary Summit on
Agriculture and Water Resources.
(Draft)

Introduction.

The purpose and objective of this concept note is to provide justification for an Extra-Ordinary Summit of the African Union to be held in Libya, as proposed by the Leader of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya., that would result in the adoption and urgent implementation of proactive mechanisms and facilities in order to bring about accelerated development of the agriculture and water sectors regarded as engines of social and economic development in Africa. The paper also gives guidance on the organization of the Summit and possible outcomes.

As Africa’s developmental blue print, the principles of cooperation and partnership in NEPAD will constitute the underlying guidance and rationale for the extra-ordinary Summit on agriculture and water. NEPAD’s development process requires African governments, business communities and civil society groups to challenge themselves continuously to improve their collective performance towards achieving the goal of broad-based economic growth with food security, poverty reduction, equity and better environmental management based on a vision of Africa as nations networked into a unified continental economy and market. NEPAD recognizes agriculture and water as primary vehicles for social and economic development in Africa. Given this recognition, the proposal to hold an Extra-ordinary Summit is premised on the need for Africa to be proactive and to implement intra-regional partnership initiatives in agriculture and water resources sectors, whose positive ramifications by way of poverty reduction and food self-sufficiency would be felt by the majority of the people of the continent, especially those in the rural areas.        

In undertaking that exercise at this early phase of the implementation of NEPAD, it becomes clear that the development partners have not made significant efforts to turn their expression of good intentions in terms of increased flows of financial resources and access especially to their agricultural markets into positive action to put Africa on the path of sustained growth and sustainable development.

Background

Employing more than 60% of the continent’s population and being the source of about 40% of hard currency earnings for most African countries, agriculture is a major contributor to GDP and therefore one of the most important vehicle for economic and social development in Africa. Also, 75% of the poor in Africa work and live in rural areas where agriculture is the principal source of employment. Rural poverty is caused, inter-alia, by (i) low and unequal access to land and water, (ii) low levels of equipment use, and capitalization, caused by poor or inexistent access to finance, (iii) inadequate communications and transport infrastructure resulting in poorly functioning markets, (iv) urban bias in public expenditure for social services and infrastructure .

The agriculture sector suffered many set backs since the emergence of independent Africa. The causes of these set backs include limited public and private investment; land degradation, which affected about 65% of the agricultural lands since 1950; frequent drought and uneven distribution of water resources – a vital input for improvement of the sector. Productivity and per capita production has been on the decline since 30 years ago while the content’s import bill for food commodities during the past several years steadily increased, reaching about US$18.7 billion in the year 2000. Production of food crops such as rice, wheat, maize and sorghum and cassava, which constitute the greater part of food consumed in the continent need to be boosted through innovative cooperative arrangements involving the public, private and community sectors in the continent.

Livestock and fisheries are important sectors for economic and social development of African nations. These sectors provide food, employment and income. Furthermore, livestock provide farm inputs such as draught power, manure and transport. Livestock accounts for over a quarter of the total value of agricultural production and about 8% of the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The African livestock sub-sector is largely traditional and is dominated by pastoralists and smallholder mixed crop-livestock producers.  This traditional sector particularly suffers from under development due, amongst others, to insufficient water supply for livestock watering.

Water is perhaps the most important catalytic resource for the development and sustainability of all forms of livelihoods and health of the people of Africa. It is a vital resource for the development of the livestock, Fisheries and crop sectors as well as for the protection and development of human welfare, particularly in water supply and sanitation. For this reason it is necessary that adequate attention is paid to the development of the sector especially as this relate to agriculture and food security. Africa’s water potential is estimated at 5000m3/Capita/year. These resources are also distributed in a skewed manner in the continent, with the majority of the food grain production areas having limited exploitable reserves and thus facing frequent shortages. Given current population projections, over 400 million people are expected to be living in at least 17 water-scarce African countries by the year 2010. Their lack of water will severely constrain food production, ecosystem protection and economic development. The highest price is often paid by the poor majority of people in terms of the money and energy spent to access water. Today over 300 million people in Africa still do not have reasonable access to safe water.

While wider management and exploitation of the water resource base at regional and sub-regional levels is necessary to support such large-scale commercial farming as would enable Africa to take its rightful place in the international agricultural export market, it is its local management, harnessing and equitable distribution for small scale irrigation at the community level that will have the most immediate positive impact on the lives and livelihoods of the African people. Indeed a strong political and financial commitment to the issue of local and joint management and sharing of water resources will ensure poverty alleviation at local level and considerably reduce Africa’s dependency on international and food aid.

 

Justification

Africa’s commitments to socio-economic development, particularly in agriculture and water sectors, are contained in various treaties and protocols including: the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community; the Lagos Plan of Action for the Economic Development of Africa; the Final Act of Lagos; and the Priority Programme for Economic Recovery. These commitments have been further crystallized in the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and its Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and the Action Plan of the Environment Initiative. To carry these commitments further, the 2nd Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union held in Maputo in July 2003, following a proposal by the Libyan leader, Colonel Muamar Ghadafi, discussed and agreed to hold an Extra-ordinary Summit of the Assembly to address the challenges of the Sectors in order to help pull the continent out of its current misery.

Historically African governments had tended to rely heavily on external technical and financial assistance to implement their development plans and programmes. This heavy reliance has largely failed the continent. The assistance mainly resulted in perpetuating the continent’s dependence while aggravating poverty despite the availability of natural and qualified human resources to make a positive difference. African governments have not made much progress in committing sufficient public resources to the agriculture and water sectors, neither have they succeeded in mobilizing African private sector resources for agricultural development. Moreover Africa has not made much progress in departing from the old ideas of development based on trading patterns dependent on exports, to non-African countries, of raw materials and semi-processed goods, to embracing new ideas that emphasize trading in higher-valued-added products. This trade should first be and subsequently between African countries and the Rest of the World. The lopsided structure of Africa’s trading relations with the rest of the world will continue to create conditions of instability and insecurity for the continent unless concrete sustainable measures are taken to correct it. Hence, there is need for a complementary approach that embraces new ideas for Africa’s development process with the view to create new paths to develop capabilities in production and trade and competencies, especially amongst business communities.

African governments, in the context of NEPAD and relevant action plans, can contribute to accelerated socio-economic development, by focusing on key sectors of the their economies, such as agriculture and water and their interfacing, and by mobilizing and directing local private and public resources to them in a way that would strengthen inter-African cooperation and improve the lot of the rural poor.  It is for this reason that an extra-Ordinary Summit of the African Union is needed to take immediate bold and practical steps, supported by Africa’s own resources, to develop the most vital sectors (agriculture and water) to ascertain the continents real political and economic independence and to win the total confidence of the African civil society in the political leadership of the continent.

Challenges of the Agriculture and Water Sectors.

The challenges facing the agriculture and water sectors in Africa are many and have their basis in social, economic and environmental factors.

The main challenge for Africa’s agriculture is to increase productivity and production in a way as would eliminate food deficiency and increase export. To achieve this Africa faces the further challenge of translating the Governments’ earlier commitment to allocating 10% of their national budgets to the sector into reality and creating the right environment for attracting local and foreign investment in the sector.

While the rest of the world is making considerable progress in biotechnology to increase productivity in their agricultural sectors and to ensure sustainable levels of food production, research and development capacity in Africa on the other hand still remain underdeveloped, largely uncoordinated and ill funded. Although attempts are underway by research institutions themselves to coordinate their activities and to avoid duplication of efforts, the continent has a lot of work to do in this area and to ensure sufficient funding for research and development. Insufficient rural infrastructure is also constraining attempts to create markets for local produce or to take advantage of existing ones. African governments are therefore faced with the added challenge to ensure sufficient access to markets and to reduce post harvest losses in order to increase the income of the rural communities and to enhance food self-sufficiency.

While some of these challenges require long-term actions to address, some others could be tackled in the short or medium term by:

  • Creating the right environment to attract African private sector investment in agricultural research and development and production;
  • Encouraging and capturing investment from abroad;
  • Improving the perception of risk involved in investing in Africa;
  • Harness the potential of the people of the continent;
  • Translating sectoral development programmes and plans into concrete actions supported by Africa’s own resources;
  • improving equitable access to productive natural resources and technology; and
  • increasing access to financial services and market for rural communities;
  • Identifying and focusing developmental efforts on key/critical crop commodities for accelerated gains in food self-sufficiency;
  • Secondary and tertiary processing of agricultural products to increase their export value;
  • Recognizing and exploiting the differentiated but complementary comparative advantages of the different countries in agricultural production and agro-industry development;
  • Developing the rural infrastructure to promote the emergence of viable local markets and to facilitate movement of locally produced food throughout the continent.

For the Water sector, Africa is faced with the challenge, first and foremost, of  ‘dismantling’ the political bottle necks to equitable access to the resources and secondly to directing sufficient financial and other necessary resources to tapping and channelling water from water-rich to water-poor areas. This call for serious priority setting and some radical commitments for joint actions to:

  • Establish and support funding facilities and mechanisms for harnessing the potential of the continent’s water resources for enhanced productivity and production in the agriculture sector and for improved supply and sanitation at the rural level.
  • Establish a viable political framework for regional cooperation to jointly manage, develop and equitably utilize shared water.
  •  Establish a viable cooperation framework that would ensure that water-poor countries could tap from the resource-endowed countries.

Objective.

The Objective of the Extra-Ordinary Summit is to bring about a fast tract implementation of critical plans of the NEPAD, particularly the CAADP, by undertaking immediate concrete actions, supported by Africa’s own financial and human resources, to address fundamental sets of challenges in agriculture and water that could catalyse accelerated and integrated development for enhanced food security and reduced rural poverty. To this end the Summit will seek to:

  • Focus the attention of Africa’s political leadership on making concrete financial arrangements for investment in agriculture and water sectors.
  • Mobilize political will and commitments for the sustainable tapping, conservation and management of Africa’s water resources for agricultural development;
  • Mobilize commitment to attract the African private sector financial and human resources to the Agriculture and water sectors.
  • Make concrete arrangements for the support of the African Water Facility of the Africa Water Vision 2025.

·         Agree on a political framework for shared water management agricultural development.

·         Agree on an arrangement for accelerated development of key crop commodities.

Process Strategy.

The Preparatory Committee set up by the African Union will prepare the modalities of the meeting and coordinate the documentation. It will be supported by the local Organizing Committee in Libya.

The Committee will prepare action-oriented documents that will facilitate the taking of concrete decisions. It is proposed that a meeting of experts and Ministers of agriculture and water resources, precede the Extra-Ordinary Summit to deliberate and crystallize concrete actions for consideration and adoption by the Summit. To facilitate the processing of the recommendations of the Experts and Ministerial meetings by the Executive Council in line with the practice in the African Union, an Extra-ordinary session of the Executive Council will be held before the Extra-Ordinary Summit.

Expected Outcome.

With the current spate of globalisation, Africa, now more than ever before, needs to take ownership and leadership of its development process taking into account the need for an integrated approach. Strategic partnership for joint and or shared management, funding and equitable utilization of the potentials of the agriculture and water sectors between the private and public sectors, and between countries, should constitute the cornerstone of the continents approach to development. The arrangement should be such as would create the right environment for sustainable private sector investment in the respective sectors, while providing all necessary support for development of the small farmer and farmer cooperatives through appropriate financing mechanisms.

The envisioned economic partnerships should, in particular, lead to a steady flow of new investment and the creation of gainful employment through:

  1. The creation of new production capacities and/or integration of similar production structures throughout the continent with the view of expanding production and competitiveness;
  2. Guaranteed access to African markets of raw materials and finished products produced by African trans-national corporations with the view of increasing the share of Africa in its own and dynamic markets;
  3. Expanding the share of Africa in world trade especially through export of higher-value added products rather than raw materials; and
  4. Giving priority to strategic commodities that are being imported in large quantities and/or exported as raw materials and thereafter imported in finished forms in large quantities. The focus here should be on those commodities that bring the highest return and reward to a large number of African populations.

In order to achieve this the Extra-Ordinary Summit is Expected to:

  •  Establish a Mechanism/Fund for financing agricultural development in Africa;
  • Agree on a policy framework for the development of key strategic crop commodities, from the African food basket, for fast tract implementation of CAADP.
  • Endorse the Africa Water Vision 2025 and the Africa Water Facility;
  •  Agree on a political framework for shared/joint management, development and utilization of Africa’s water resources;
  • Agree on a policy framework for public-private cooperation that will attract increased private capital into the agriculture and water sectors.

Types of Documents for the Summit.

The Summit will have two types of documents available to it, namely: reference documents and working documents. The reference documents will provide general background information on the horizon of socio-economic developmental challenges in Africa with particular reference to agriculture, food security and water and their pivotal role in tackling these challenges. On the other hand one working document, of short-term and action oriented nature, will be available to it. This will focus on:

  1. Financing for agricultural development in Africa;
  2. Financing for water resources development and sustainable utilization in Africa;
  3. Framework for management, development and utilization of water resources for agricultural development.
  4. Policy framework for the development and promotion of key crop commodities in Africa.
  5. Decision on adoption of the Africa Water Vision 2025;
  6. Commitment to Inter Basin Water Transfer and other decisions on political and financial commitments to the development of the agriculture and water  sectors.

African Partnership Arrangement that may result from the Summit.

Partnership at the level of the continent should be geared towards taking ownership and leadership of the integrated development process in the agriculture and water sectors. It should involve the African public and private sectors as well as civil society in such a manner as would create the right environment for sustainable private investment in the respective sectors, supported by government-guaranteed bank loans, while providing all necessary support for development of the small farmer and farmer cooperatives through appropriate funding mechanisms. The partnership calls for strong public sector commitment to giving financial support to the private sector and to further strengthen that between the two and the small farmers, geared towards improving the latter’s lots in a way that will pull them out of their current poverty. This may call for establishment of continent-level rural financing schemes that will empower the small farmer such as through extended small-scale irrigation schemes and market infrastructure development.

The partnership should promote African ownership development processes in agriculture and water for reduced dependent on developmental assistance. It should make developmental assistance play an effective subsidiary and supplementary role as envisioned under NEPAD and the UN Charter.