JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – The Africa Food Systems Parliamentarian Network (AFSPAN) together with the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Non-State Actors (NSAs) have pledged to support the African Union Commission (AUC) to drive agriculture on the continent.
In their meeting with Mr. Moses Vilakati, the Commissioner for the Department of Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy, and Sustainable Environment (DARBE) in the African Union Commission on the sidelines of the CAADP Launch in Johannesburg today, AFSPAN members headed by Dr. Dora Siliya, said the network that was established just a year ago with a key focus on how they will support the African Union Commission to drive the agricultural agenda at the national level.
They are members of parliament in their respective countries. One of their key functions is to try to talk to their peers when they’re in the parliament on the issue of finance, and budget allocation to agriculture.
“We are working in complementarity with the Pan African Parliament (PAP)’s agriculture committee some of whose members are sitting at AFSPAN that specifically looks at agriculture, and in particular, CAADP. We thought that it was important to provide visibility, especially going from CADP 3 going forward. We agreed that members of parliament needed to take a very specific interest in supporting the African Union,
governments and civil society in making this issue visible.
“In my experience as a former Minister of Agriculture in Zambia, we created hype about CAADP and then after a few years, it all just dissipated. So we thought as members of Parliament, particularly those responsible for agricultural committees, we don’t have to compete, we work in complementarity with PAP, with AU, with government, and CSos to keep this issue alive,” Dr Siliya said.
AFSPAN is made up of current and former members of Parliament who have an interest in the issues of agriculture.
Chikondi Chabvuta, the Coordinator of the CAAPD Non-State Actors Group pledged commitment to Commissioner Vilakti’s leadership in driving the Kampala era for the implementation of the continental agricultural development programme.
“As non-state actors, we appreciate the level of engagement that AU has been giving the non-state actors, both at member state, regional, but also at continental level. Our past engagements have been strengthened. We’ve been there since the Maputo and Malabo era when we saw a lot of engagement of non-state actors being very part of the process from the joint sector reviews to any capacity-building sessions that were being organized by AUC. The non-state actors were involved in that.
“We appreciate it because when we go back to our countries, it becomes easy to work with the CAADP focal people because we are now working on the same level of information. So now that we are here, one of the things that we have done is to simplify the process for the technical teams at the national level, but also for the parliamentarians that you have just met now,” Chabvuta said
Several organizations have developed toolkits to simplify the work from the data into action. They have managed to provide policy recommendations, specifically targeting the departments of agriculture, just to make sure the data just doesn’t end there. This has led to actual implementation within the budgeting cycles with the non-state actors.
