Fourth CAADP Biennial Review Brief: COMESA

AUTHOR

Paul Guthiga, Greenwell Matchaya, Joel Okwir, and Augustin Wambo Yamdjeu.

SERIES NAME

Biennial Review

YEAR

2025

ABSTRACT

The Malabo Declaration on accelerated agricultural growth and transformation for shared prosperity and improved livelihoods is a set of goals adopted by Heads of State and Government of the African Union in 2014 in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea (AUC 2014). To translate the seven Malabo Commitments into results, a call for action was made by the Heads of State and Government for the African Union Commission (AUC) and the African Union Development Agency NEPAD (AUDA-NEPAD), in collaboration with partners, to initiate a review process to be conducted on a biennial basis starting 2017, with an objective of tracking, measuring, and reporting progress toward achieving the Malabo Declaration Commitments by 2025.

 

Four Biennial Reviews (BR) have been conducted—the inaugural BR in 2017, the second BR in 2019, the third BR in 2021, and the most recent BR concluded in 2023. 

 

As part of fulfilling Commitment 7 on mutual accountability, the fourth BR Report (BR4) and the Africa Agriculture Transformation Scorecard (AATS) were launched at the 37th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the AU Heads of State and Government in March 2024 (AUC 2024). 

 

This brief draws on that report to summarize the performance of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) region in pursuit of the seven Malabo Declaration Commitments and analyze challenges faced and lessons learned. The final section of the brief highlights several policy actions COMESA Member States should take to meet their Malabo Declaration Commitments by 2025 more effectively.

 

A key recommendation from the analysis indicates that specific areas of intervention to reduce hunger and malnutrition in the COMESA region by 2025 include enhancing production and productivity by increasing the use of inputs and other technologies, reducing post-harvest losses, allocating resources to social protection, and enforcing food safety regulations.

PUBLISHER

AKADEMIYA2063