On May 30, 2019, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement entered into force. To trigger its implementation, the agreement needed a minimum of 22 country ratifications. The AfCFTA aims to gradually eliminate tariff and non-tariff barriers, accelerate regional and continental integration, improve customs and trade facilitation, develop regional and continental value chains, foster investment and industrialization, and ultimately, boost intra-African trade.
Samuel Benin is Deputy Division Director of IFPRI's Africa Regional Office. Ernesto Tiburcio is a Research Analyst with IFPRI's Development Strategy and Government Division.
In Ghana and other countries, controversy over what figures to count as GAE as a share of GTE toward the CAADP 10 percent target continues to impede the tracking of this indicator. Such discrepancies may side-track policy actions and efforts needed to sustainably raise productivity and growth in the sector. Two recent agPER studies conducted in Ghana show high estimates of performance in this indicator at 6.7–21.2 percent in 2001– 2011 and 5.8–7.5 percent in 2012–2015.
This note presented revised estimates for Ghana in accordance with the official AU guidance note for assessing GAE against the CAADP 10 percent target. It also proposed a revised formula for obtaining parallel estimates when expenditures of Cocobod and other market-based PBCs are included in the calculations, which was achieved by adding expenditures of all market-based PBCs to GTE in the denominator to make it comparable to adding expenditures of Cocobod to GAE in the numerator.
Participants of the Training Workshop on Monitoring and Evaluation for Agriculture and Rural Development, Nairobi, Kenya February 25th –March 2nd, 2019
Over 30 African Union member countries have begun the next-generation National Agricultural Investment Plan (NAIP) process, yet keeping tabs on where each country stands in the multi-year process is a challenge. Until now.
As part of ongoing outreach events, IFPRI connected with over 200 high school and college students during the month of May, inviting them to participate in the ReSAKSS Data Challenge. ReSAKSS’ outreach to youth and the next generation of African leaders in agricultural research, technical innovation and the arts promises to stir up exciting new participation in the second edition of the ReSAKSS Data Challenge.
As part of the seventh commitment of the Malabo Declaration, African Union (AU) Member States agreed to report progress in achieving the Malabo goals and targets biennially. Thus, in recent months ReSAKSS has supported the African Union Commission (AUC) and the African Union Development Agency–New Partnership for Africa's Development (AUDA-NEPAD) in training hundreds of country experts and analysts who are currently hard at work preparing for the second Biennial Review (BR) report, to be published in January 2020.
In the 2017 BR Report, 22 performance categories and 43 indicators were defined for the seven thematic areas of performance to evaluate country performance in achieving agricultural growth and transformation goals in Africa. Of the 55-member states, 47 submitted their validated national reports to their respective Regional Economic Communities (RECs), including five EAC partner states: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. The final scorecard was prepared by the AUC and NPCA, with support from the RECs and technical partners.