International Policy Ep26, Malabo Declaration: The Race to Transform Food System by 2025, Can Africa Meet its Goals?

In June 2014, a significant moment in Africa's agricultural history took place in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, at the African Union Summit. Here, the Heads of State and Government adopted the Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods. The declaration is a bold commitment to revolutionize agriculture across the continent, aiming for shared prosperity and improved livelihoods for all Africans by 2025. But where does Africa stand today in achieving these ambitious goals?

Understanding the Challenges
Africa faces a complex set of challenges that hamper its agricultural growth. One of the key issues is the continent's limited capacity to generate analyses and manage data crucial for evidence-based policy development. Without accurate data, it is difficult to track progress or make informed decisions. Poor data management can be a stumbling block to the effective implementation of agricultural policies that affect the agriculture sector and other related sectors like nutrition.

The Cost of Hunger Study in Africa (COHA), conducted by the African Union Commission (AUC), revealed startling insights: child undernutrition significantly affects health and educational outcomes. The study showed that malnutrition not only hampers children's growth and learning ability but also has a long-term impact on national productivity. For instance, in Ethiopia, the study found that the country loses 16.5% of its GDP annually due to malnutrition. The Malabo Declaration acknowledges these dire findings and calls for urgent action to address hunger and improve nutrition.

Ending Hunger: The 2025 Commitment
One of the boldest commitments of the Declaration is to end hunger in Africa by 2025. This means doubling agricultural productivity, reducing post-harvest losses, and integrating agricultural productivity with social protection initiatives. To achieve this, African countries must enhance access to quality inputs, such as seeds, and provide smart support to smallholder farmers who form the backbone of Africa's agriculture.

However, this missed the inclusion of agroecology, reflecting on the broader trend of sidelining indigenous knowledge and sustainable low-cost practices that have huge regenerative potential and can equally favor the smallholder farmers' models.

Moreover, the pronounced omission of the farmer-managed seed systems poses questions in the preservation of indigenous foods that are termed noble foods and Africa’s cultural heritage. Such principles are critical in ensuring the future of food and nutrition security and the right to food especially in communities in remote rural areas.

In Kenya, the government has been working to improve irrigation systems to ensure a reliable water supply, which is vital for maintaining high levels of productivity. However, much remains to be done to scale these efforts countrywide, especially in ASAL areas and now arable land that is facing climatic change characterized by erratic rain threats and prolonged droughts.

There is also a need to catapult the resolution to reducing post-harvest losses by 2025, which is critical given that many African farmers lose a significant portion of their produce due to inadequate storage and transport facilities. Looking at Nigeria, the government has started investing in cold storage facilities to reduce spoilage of highly perishable foods such as fish which are significant value chains that be easily overlooked as key sources of revenue. This is a step in the right direction but needs to be replicated and scaled up across the continent.

Poverty Reduction Through Inclusive Agricultural Growth
The Malabo Declaration aimed to ensure that agricultural growth contributes to at least 50% of Africa's poverty reduction with targets to sustain annual agricultural GDP growth of at least 6%; to support and facilitate preferential entry and participation for women and youth in gainful and attractive agri-business opportunities.

This goal is based on the understanding that inclusive agricultural growth can be a powerful tool for poverty reduction, especially if it creates opportunities for women and youth. In Uganda, initiatives to involve young people in agribusiness have begun to show promise, providing them with skills and resources to start their farming businesses. Similarly, Ghana’s policy to support women in agriculture through microfinance and training programs highlights the potential of targeted interventions to uplift Women in Agriculture.

However, challenges remain. Limited progress in developing agro-industries and agribusiness hampers value addition and competitiveness of African products undermining the sector's potential in transformation and generation of gainful employment opportunities for the growing African youth and women. There is a dire need to transform this sector to create employment and generate more wealth for the continent and FSPN Africa believes this can be well achieved through meaningful partnerships and proper financing.

Sustainable Use of Natural Resources
Stressing the importance of sustainable management of Africa’s natural resources, including land, water, livestock, and fisheries. This is essential not only for conserving the environment but also for ensuring long-term agricultural productivity. Countries like Rwanda have been praised for their efforts in promoting sustainable land use and agroforestry practices, which have helped restore degraded landscapes and boost crop yields.

However, achieving these objectives requires coordinated efforts across multiple sectors, including infrastructure, energy, trade, and education. Coherent policies as well as governance and institutional arrangements at national and regional levels must be put in place to optimize resource use and maximize impact.

Building Resilience and Accountability
The declaration also emphasizes building resilience to climate and weather-related risks. With climate change posing a significant threat to African agriculture, the commitment to ensuring that at least 30% of farm, pastoral, and fisher households are resilient by 2025 is crucial.

We have had projects that promote drought-resistant crops and community-based water management have already demonstrated success in building resilience but the drought-resistant seeds at some point remain with research institutions at trial point. There is a need to have such inputs getting to the farmers and making them realize the impact of research at scale. How possible is this? I can say collaboration with farmer-serving organizations on the ground can help bridge the knowledge and access gaps.

Finally, the Malabo Declaration calls for mutual accountability for actions and results. Countries have committed to a biennial Agricultural Review Process to track progress, encourage peer learning, and hold each other accountable. This approach ensures that the goals set are not just lofty ambitions but concrete targets with measurable outcomes.

A Call to Action
As we approach 2025, the Malabo Declaration remains a powerful framework for Africa's agricultural transformation. While progress has been made, there is still a long way to go. From ending hunger and reducing poverty to enhancing sustainability and building resilience, the goals are ambitious but achievable. What is needed now is sustained commitment, innovative solutions, and coordinated efforts to turn these goals into reality. Africa’s future prosperity depends on it.

Enhancing data capacities across the continent to better monitor and evaluate the progress of agricultural transformation is an important area that must be strengthened today more than ever. Moreover, increased funding for data generation, management, analysis and utilization in the agriculture sector should be given the much-needed support.

I am hoping that The Africa Food System Forum 2024 happening this week from September 2-6, 2024, in Kigali, Rwanda will be able to spotlight this declaration whose decade of action is coming to an end in a few months’ time. Time is almost up.

Even though this forum aims to spotlight the continental agenda on food systems, showcase innovative approaches, solutions, proven business models, best practices and the latest technologies that could transform agriculture and food systems to ensure food and nutrition security in Africa while creating jobs and opportunities youth and women, someone should remind us of the Malabo Declarations, how much have we done so far, as we amalgamate collective journey of fostering healthier, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable food systems.