By Kofi Adu Domfeh
From Maputo to Malabo, the NEPAD
Agency’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) has
shown the way to transform Africa’s agricultural sector.
For the past decade, CAADP has
served as the continent’s policy framework for agricultural sector growth and
economic development.
The Maputo Declaration of African
Heads of States was “unprecedented”, says Dr. Augustin Wambo Yamdjeu,
Coordinator of CAADP.
In Maputo, governments committed to
increase their public expenditure to agriculture by allocating a minimum of ten
percent of annual budgets to the sector.
There is now the quest to grow the
agriculture sector by an annual six percent under the Malabo Declaration, which
is crucial to consolidate the achievements and gains in the implementation of
CAADP to ensure food and nutrition security.
“The Malabo Declaration is a
game-changer,” said Dr. Yamdjeu during a media teleconference on “Walking the
Talk – Malabo Declaration”. He has emphasized that the two declarations are
mutually re-enforcing.
Vulnerabilities
of Smallscale Farming
Smallscale farming is at the heart
of CAADP implementation.
A recent study by NEPAD has found
that smallscale farmers are the prime financiers of the agricultural sector in
Africa and also provide food for close to 70percent of the continent’s
population.
Climate change, however, threatens
the drive to protect the interest of smallholder farmers in the next decade –
2015-2025 – of Sustaining CAADP Momentum.
“Climate change is something that we
are suffering from; there is no doubt about it. But our contribution to climate
change is minimal compared to the extent of impact that we are facing today,”
observed Dr. Yamdjeu.
According to the United Nations
University Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (UNU-INRA), Sub-Saharan
Africa faces a significant decline in soil fertility, a situation that could
worsen food security in the region.
An earlier study by the
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) had also indicated that
climate change would hit developing countries the hardest, leading to massive
decline in crop yields and production.
The study said 25 million more
children would be malnourished by 2050 due to the effects of climate change.
In Ghana, for instance, the reality
of the impacts of the changing climate is dawning on local farmers.
True to forecast by Ghana’s
meteorological agency this year, low rains have been recorded in the northern
and middle belts of the country, compared to previous years.
Farmers in the country’s food basket
areas like Techiman, Nkoranza and Atebubu in the Brong Ahafo Region are
counting huge losses in cassava, yam and maize production as a result of the
poor rains.
There is fear of food scarcity if
the rainfall pattern persists.
The NEPAD Agency has been
implementing climate-related programmes, including the Agriculture Climate
Change Programme, Gender Agriculture Climate Change, Climate Smart Agriculture
Alliance, NEPAD Climate Fund and TerrAfrica Sustainable Land and Water
Management.
However, the level of scientific
knowledge and research findings in tackling climate change is still limited in
local farming communities.
The concern therefore is that the
needs of small-scale farmers must be prioritized on the road to Paris in
December, when a legally binding climate agreement is expected to be reached at
the UN Climate Change Conference.
The CAADP Coordinator believes “to
adapt is most crucial to Africa”, stating that adoption of new technologies
must be accessible and affordable.
Vulnerable African farmers need to
merge indigenous knowledge with new technologies to be resilient to climate
change.
“They need to do something for the
smallscale farmer because it is only by making them stronger, by making their
livelihoods system more resilient in the face of climate variability that we
are going to attain sustainable development,” said Dr. Yamdjeu.
Walking the Talk of the Malabo
Declaration would therefore require that African governments and the African
Group of Negotiators highlight the interest of the African smallholder farmer
in the climate talks, especially in presenting their Intended Nationally
Determined Contributions (INDCs) to the UNFCCC.
No comments:
Post a Comment