Mon, 10/03/2011

ReSAKSS recently  joined development partners and international non-governmental organizations to listen to strategies and approaches used to expand the role of non-state actors in support of country-led agriculture and food security planning.  The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme's Development Partners Task Team (CAADP DP TT) Non-state actors range from anyone from farmers, donors, consultants, NGOs and other groups taking action to implement the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).  The paper by Ian Randall, "Guidelines for Non State Actor participation in CAADP processes" was presented, followed by participant discussions on the Guidelines and other capacity development strategies and approaches.  The purpose of the paper was to key in on specific guidelines to propose structures and processes to ensure non-state actors can participate and contribute fully in CAADP and the growth of African agriculture at the country, regional and continental level to boost participation from all parties involved in the process of agricultural improvement.

Another paper, "Creating Strong Stakeholder Engagement in Feed the Future: Suggested Strategy and Guidelines," presented by InterAction, highlighted the need to engage civil society in all stakeholder dialogues, in order to enhance resource mobilization and the efficiency and effectiveness of all development outcomes.

As a result of this meeting development partners have agreed to focus on the following areas:

• Monitoring & evaluation, mutual accountability and joint sector reviews – strengthening common practices and systems to create accountability.
• Capacity development – working with country systems to strengthen their ability to coordinate, lead, and manage agendas; (referring to short-term capacity as well as long-term tertiary education capacity building programs)
• Deeper engagement, linkages and alignment with private sector – how private investments in agriculture can work with public investments in country processes
• Program development – With country agriculture Investment Plans, targetting  CAADP implementation by working together to ensure best practices, lessons learned for effective program design and implementation, and linkages with other programs.

The meeting's presentations were made by:

• Jeff Hill the Chair of the CAADP DP TT and USAID's Director of Policy for the Bureau for Food Aid,
• Ian Randall of Wasafiri Consulting. Presentation: Framework for Non-State Actor Engagement
• Brian Greenberg the Director of Strategic Impact of InterAction, presenting "Creating Strong Stakeholder Engagement in Agriculture & Food Security"
• Unami Mpofu of GIZ and David Nielson of 4/Ag Productivity group of the World Bank updated on the Capacity Development Joint Action Group and GIZ
• Ann Steensland of the Alliance to End Hunger and Bruce White of Catholic Relief Services presented on Developing Non State Actors' Capacity in the Field: Examples from Ghana and Kenya

The non-state actors group will continue to work on developing relationships with the nations involved and pursuing the CAADP process.  The great hope for the CAADP DP TT discussion, and future dialogues to come, is to strengthen the ties of non-state actors to state actors involved in the process of improving development and growth in the agricultural sector.