With Policy LINK Support, Africa’s Agricultural Agenda Looks Ahead to the Next Decade
Group photo of the team that drafted the next ten-year CAADP strategy and action plan, known as CASAP.
Launched in 2003, the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) is a continental framework to drive agricultural transformation and boost food security and economic growth across Africa. Beyond food security and improved nutritional outcomes, CAADP also aims to reduce poverty, create employment, protect the environment and build climate resilience.
Building on the successes of CAADP’s initial, ten-year phase, the broad outlines of which were articulated in the 2013 Maputo Declaration, African Union (AU) Member States adopted the 2014 Malabo Declaration, which recommitted to CAADP and set ambitious goals for the years since, including eradicating hunger, reducing malnutrition, and tripling intra-African trade by 2025. Although the Malabo commitments have played a significant role in centering agriculture in Africa’s development agenda, persistent challenges and changing global dynamics call for a new agenda—one that continues to strive toward the targets of the Malabo declaration and the AU’s broader Agenda 2063 while, at the same time, leveraging new opportunities for agricultural transformation and inclusive growth.
According to feedback from more than 700 hundred agricultural sector leaders, policymakers, and non-state actor representatives who participated in Policy LINK regional consultations in the summer of 2024, advancements in artificial intelligence and predictive climate models can go a long way to building the resilience of rural communities and the smallholder farmers who anchor them.
Many of these opportunities lie at the intersection of technology and forward-thinking policy. According to feedback from more than 700 hundred agricultural sector leaders, policymakers, and non-state actor representatives who participated in Policy LINK regional consultations in the summer of 2024, advancements in artificial intelligence and predictive climate models, for example, can go a long way to building the resilience of rural communities and the smallholder farmers who anchor them. Involving these stakeholders earlier in the policymaking process—and in a more substantial way—will be key to scaling these innovations, though. That, in part, is why the AU has placed an even higher premium on inclusivity during CAADP’s coming ten-year phase.
In mid-2023, the AU rolled out a comprehensive roadmap for developing the new CAADP agenda, beginning with stakeholder consultations and buttressed by governance and coordination structures, a robust analysis and drafting process, and political mobilization. These efforts will culminate in the January 2025 endorsement and adoption of the new CAADP agenda—defined by its associated declaration, strategy, and action plan—by AU Member States. The new strategy will help align CAADP to current food systems thinking, respond to emerging trends, and address systemic gaps and implementation challenges that hinder the achievement of CAADP goals.
Getting there has been a deliberate, wide-ranging effort involving stakeholders from across the continent and at all levels of the food system—from policymakers, to private sector and non-state actors, to producers. Together, their contributions have laid the foundations for the post-Malabo agenda, which USAID’s Policy LINK program has helped shepherd through:
Stakeholder consultations across each of the five AU regions, led by Regional Economic Communities and with input from interest groups across Africa.
Independent memoranda from stakeholders and development agencies.
Technical research and analysis by 13 Technical Working Groups led by African institutions and global centers of excellence.
High-level dialogues with public- and private-sector African and global leaders.
Technical drafting and validation.
Political ownership from national and regional policymakers, who had the opportunity to provide their input throughout the process.
Drafting of the 2026-2035 CAADP Strategy and Action Plan
With the above as context, from August 4-13, 2024, the AU and its partners convened a nine-day write-shop in Kampala, Uganda to draft a new ten-year strategy and action plan. The document outlines technical priorities, activities, approaches, deliverables, and expected outcomes under the CAADP framework to improve African agriculture in the next ten years. The CAADP Strategy and Action Plan (CASAP), which will see both regional and national implementation, is slated for adoption in January 2025 by a meeting of AU Heads of State and Government (HOSG) in Kampala.
Although the drafting team was led by high-ranking representatives of the African Union Commission (AUC) and the AU’s development arm, AUDA-NEPAD, the process they observed was highly collaborative and yielded inputs from a representative cross-section of regional organizations, civil society actors, and development partners.
To earn HOSG support, CASAP’s drafters, facilitated by Policy LINK, included 27 carefully selected technical experts and practitioners from across the African continent. The drafting team was drawn from individuals involved in post-Malabo stakeholder consultations, data collection, and analysis and who demonstrated a strong track record in agriculture and food strategy development. Their role was to synthesize, consolidate, and interpret inputs from stakeholder consultations and technical analysis to define CAADP priorities, strategies, approaches, and actions for the next decade.
The drafting exercise generated principles, values, and enabling actions to inform the declaration, complete with a ten-year strategy and action plan that captured the African context, its trends and challenges, lessons from the last 20 years, an updated CAADP theory of change, goals and strategic objectives, and mechanisms for implementation. The drafting exercise also developed a results framework that outlines input-, output-, outcome-, and impact-level changes required to achieve agri-food systems transformation. The drafting team conceptualized the ten-year CAADP agenda into the following six strategic objectives:
Intensifying Sustainable Food Production, Agro-Industrialization, and Trade
Boosting Investment and Financing for Accelerated Agri-Food Systems Transformation
Ensuring Food Security and Nutrition
Advancing Inclusivity and Equitable Livelihoods
Building Resilient Agri-Food Systems
Strengthening Agri-Food Systems Governance
Although the drafting team was led by high-ranking representatives of the African Union Commission (AUC) and the AU’s development arm, AUDA-NEPAD, the process they observed was highly collaborative and yielded inputs from a representative cross-section of regional organizations, civil society actors, and development partners such as AGRA, AKADEMIYA2063, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). The process included agreeing on the report’s outline and priority technical themes and commitment areas, organizing the drafting team into working groups, reviewing documents, discussions, writing and refinement, and consolidation.
The Validation Workshop for the 10-Year CAADP Strategy and Action Plan
Following the writeshop, the AU and its partners organized a three-day validation workshop from August 21 to 23, 2024, also in Kampala. The workshop allowed stakeholders to review, provide feedback on, and validate the draft CASAP before it is finalized and presented to the AU Specialized Technical Committee (STC) on Agriculture, Rural Development, Water and Environment (ARDWE) in October 2024—the final step before it goes to the HOSG in January.
The validation workshop brought together a broad range of constituencies that have been actively involved in CAADP and the post-Malabo process to review the initial document prepared by the drafting team; to ensure it reflects the inputs from stakeholder consultations and Technical Working Group analysis, is technically sound, and articulates clear actions to implement the Kampala Declaration; and to identify any gaps in priorities, technical design, and strategic interventions.
Specific objectives of the August 21-23 validation workshop included:
Present the draft Ten-Year CAADP Strategy and Action Plan to stakeholders for their review and feedback.
Facilitate discussions and dialogues to ensure the strategy and action plan reflect the diverse perspectives and priorities of stakeholders across the African continent.
Validate the strategic focus areas, proposed actions and implementation principles outlined in the plan.
Identify any gaps or areas that require further refinement or strengthening.
Secure buy-in and commitment from stakeholders for the successful implementation of the Ten-Year CAADP Strategy and Action Plan (2026-2035).
The validation workshop was a highly inclusive process that provided actionable comments, insights, and amendments to strengthen various aspects of the draft strategy and action to reflect the needs and aspirations of the stakeholders. It also provided an opportunity to reflect on lessons from the post-Malabo process, including cross-cutting issues, themes, priorities, and approaches across the continent and the unique needs of specific regions.
The validation workshop was attended by about 120 participants from the AUC, AUDA-NEPAD, RECs, conveners and co-conveners of the 13 Technical Working Groups, members of the CASAP drafting team, representative of AU Member States, selected heads of institutions or groups that submitted independent memoranda outlining their specific priorities for the coming ten years, members of parliament, non-state actors and civil society organizations, youth representatives, farmers’ organizations, women’s organizations, technical partner institutions, international financial institutions, private-sector institutions, and development partners.
The Kampala validation workshop was officially opened by Commissioner Josefa Sacko and. Hon Frank Tumwebaze, Uganda’s Minister of Agriculture, Animal Industry, and Fisheries (MAAIF). The meeting was led and facilitated by Dr. Godfrey Bahiigwa, Director of Agriculture and Rural Development at the AUC. Drafting team technical leads presented their respective strategic objectives and technical areas followed by discussions and feedback from participants.
After the validation workshop, the AU selected members of the drafting team to digest, respond to, and integrate feedback from the validation workshop. The revision team also incorporated feedback and input from a high-level technical team of experts/reviewers established by the AU for this purpose as well as from the Donor Partners Coordination Group (DPCG) to produce the revised version of the CASAP report. The new document was completed on September 2, 2024 and submitted to the AU for internal review. The AU also established a small team of technical experts to develop the Kampala Declaration statement and related targets.
As an African-led agricultural transformation agenda, CAADP is a defining example of a stakeholder-led process that aligns with USAID’s Global Food Security Strategy. Through Policy LINK, USAID’s Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security has played a central, behind-the-scenes role in strengthening CAADP processes, making them more inclusive, coordinated, and accountable. In the year ahead, Policy LINK will build on this track record by continuing specific Malabo-related activities and preparing for CASAP’s implementation. Over the next four to six months, in particular, Policy LINK’s focus will be on multi-stakeholder coordination, evidence generation, strategic communication, capacity building for member states, and setting the foundation for the rollout of CASAP.
Resources
Read more stories of Policy LINK’s support to Africa-wide initiative like CAADP.