On January 19, 2011, Guinea-Bissau became the 24th country to sign a CAADP compact.  In so doing, Guinea-Bissau becomes the 15th and final country in the ECOWAS regional economic community to transition through the Roundtable and compact signing process.

On January 18th, 2011, Zambia became the 23rd country to sign its country CAADP Compact.  In so doing, Zambia joins three other SADC member countries (Malawi, Tanzania, and Swaziland) and seven other COMESA member countries (Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Swaziland, and Uganda). 

The compact was signed at a ceremony in Lusaka by representatives from the Zambian government, cooperating partners, civil society, farmers' organizations, as well as COMESA and other regional economic organizations. 

From CAADP: Addis Ababa, 23 January 2011. GAIN - the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition - and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) are proud to announce that they signed a Memorandum of Understanding which will significantly contribute to reduce malnutrition in Africa. The agreement was co-signed today in Addis Ababa during NEPAD’s steering committee between Jay Naidoo, chair of GAIN Board and Ibrahim Mayaki, CEO of NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency.

The Statistics of Public Expenditure for Economic Development (SPEED) database, compiled by IFPRI, provides the most comprehensive and publicly available public expenditure information for 67 countries and six sectors: agriculture, education, health, defense, social protection, and transportation and communication, for the time period 1980-2007. The SPEED database is available for use by researchers, policymakers, donors, and others in the development community for a variety of economic and policy applications.

The Food Security Portal, facilitated by IFPRI, has launched a new series of global food price tools, tracking weekly global prices and daily returns of future prices for five staple agricultural commodities– hard wheat, soft wheat, rice, maize and soybeans.  These tools allow users to visually track changes in global commodities prices dating back to 1998 and changes in returns on future prices dating back to 2001.  Access these new tools at http://www.foodsecurityportal.org/policy-a

The drastic rise in food prices over the past couple of years has raised serious concerns about food and nutrition security across the world. While a coordinated response is urgently needed at both the international and regional levels, effective country-level responses are also critical. Coherent action is needed to help vulnerable populations cope with hikes in their food bills, to assist farmers in developing countries react to the opportunities and challenges presented by the rising demand for their products, and to provide information for evidence-based macro-economic policies.

ReSAKSS and Harvest Choice met at IFPRI Headquarters in Washington, DC on December 16^th and 17^th to discuss a number of key issues including 1) ReSAKSS-HarvestChoice collaboration in preparation for the 2011 Annual Trends and Outlook Report, which will have agricultural productivity as the feature theme and 2) strategies for data collection and the establishment of SAKSS nodes at the country level.  Each of the regional ReSAKSS coordinators were in attendance.  Look for more information on the outcomes of these meetings in the bi-monthly e-Newsletter editorial.

While multi-stakeholder participation is a core feature of the CAADP process, it was determined at the 6^th CAADP Partnership Platform (PP) in April 2010 that the quality of non-state actor participation (NSA) had been inconsistent.  Following the PP, a working group was formed to address this issue and an action planning workshop took place in October 2010.  The outcomes of the working group and the workshop include an options paper and drafted guidelines for the participation of NSAs in the CAADP process.  Currently, these draft guidelines to enhance NSA participation are being

From the website: The Crop Calendar provides information about sowing and planting seasons and agronomic practices of the crops grown by farmers in a particular agro-ecological zone. It is a tool developed to assist farmers, extension workers, civil society and the private sector to be able to access and make available quality seeds of specific crop varieties for a particular agro-ecological zone at the appropriate sowing/planting season.

The ASTI initiative and the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) are currently calling for proposals for papers for their jointly convened conference, “Agricultural R&D: Investing in Africa’s Future: Analyzing Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities,” to be held in Accra, Ghana, 5–7 December 2011. The deadline for paper proposals is 15 January, 2011.

More details on the conference and paper submissions are available here.