Ghana Agriculture Stakeholders Validate 4th CAADP Biennial Review Report

Participants at the national validation workshop pose for a group photo.

On July 6, 2023, key government and non-state actors in Ghana's agricultural sector converged in Accra to validate data collated by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) Policy Planning Monitoring and Evaluation Division (PPMED) as part of its Biennial Review (BR) of progress against the African Union Commission’s agricultural development goals—known as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).

Fifty-seven participants from 24 institutions representing the public and private sectors, civil society organizations, development partners, research and academic bodies, farmer-based organizations, and USAID implementing partners validated the data collated by the ministry. The outputs from the workshop will inform the country’s contribution to a forthcoming Africa-wide BR report, the fourth such assessment to be published by the AUC. The third biennial review, released in March 2022, showed that Ghana was "progressing well” against CAADP goals.

To promote inclusivity, Policy LINK contributed to broadening the stakeholder group to include more actors from the sub-national level, who are commonly marginalized from such processes.

Organized by MoFA and supported by the Feed the Future Ghana Policy LINK Activity and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the workshop was part of the ministry’s push to boost inclusivity and collaboration in its CAADP reporting efforts.

The CAADP BR is a vital instrument for assessing the agricultural efforts of AU Member States and Regional Economic Communities (RECs) in Africa. It targets priority areas such as increasing agricultural productivity, enabling access to nutritious food for African people, increasing the contribution of agro-processing to economic growth and poverty reduction, enhancing the resilience of livelihoods and production systems to climate variability, and boosting intra-African trade in agricultural commodities. The BR also enables the independent assessment of Member States’ agricultural development and transformation agendas by helping them identify areas of strength and weakness to inform policy, decision-making, and priority areas.

As part of Policy LINK’s mandate to contribute to the transformation of the agriculture policy process and considering the project’s support to CAADP at the continental level, the Ghana team delivered logistical and technical support to the PPMED and MoFA in advance of the validation workshop and during it.

To promote inclusivity, Policy LINK contributed to broadening the stakeholder group to include more actors from the sub-national level, who are commonly marginalized from such processes. Seven regional directors from MoFA, including directors from the USAID Zones of Influence, were supported to participate in the validation exercise.

Policy LINK’s Ghana team is also supporting personnel from the ministry to enter the validated data into the AUC’s online BR platform.

During the workshop, Mr. Faisal Munkaila, the Deputy Director of PPMED, presented an in-depth analysis of how Ghana fared in achieving its targets in the BR. His presentation emphasized benchmarks for food safety, security, and nutrition issues, and outlined the preparation process and challenges the ministry encountered during the data collection period.

Group discussions at the workshop identified data gaps and offered recommendations on leveraging credible sources to improve the draft report. Participants emphasized the need for strategic stakeholder collaboration and timely validation workshops to enhance future reports.

Mr. Paul Siameh, Director of the MoFA Agricultural Extension Services Directorate, emphasized the urgency of high-quality data to elevate policy, planning, and implementation quality, driving progress toward poverty reduction and food security. He expressed his appreciation to USAID Ghana, Policy LINK, and the FAO for supporting the process, both technically and financially, as well as to the participants for the meaningful contributions they made to the draft report.

Resources

With USAID Policy LINK Support, AUC Launches 3rd Biennial Review Report