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Africa must walk the talk to food sovereignty.
while presiding over the opening of the 10th CAADP function a fortnight afo, on behalf of PAFO President, the Chief Executive Officer of Eastern Africa Farmers Federation, Mr. Muchiri had this to say, "On behalf of the President of PAFO, we want to thank AUC-NPCA for inviting us to grace the opening ceremony of this 10th CAADP Partnership Platform in Durban, South Africa. The PAFO Vice-President & President SACAU shall however join us on Friday to attend the remaining days of the meeting. PAFO is the Pan-African Farmers Organizations and is the continental network of all African farmers through regional farmer organizations in Eastern, Western, Southern, Central & Northern Africa namely SACAU, EAFF, UMAGRI, PROPAC & ROPPA. I regard this meeting as historical because it is held at a time when we are commemorating the 10th years of CAADP implementation. This is the right time that all of us should objectively reflect on the achievements and lessons gathered in the past decade of CAADP implementation. It is also pleasing that this meeting is happening in the year 2014 that has been declared by the African Union as the Year of Agriculture & Food Security It is important that during the year we must first remember the commitments made during the many continental and international forums. In particular: Reducing global poverty (the Millennium Summit of September 2000); The allocation of at least 10% of the national budgets to agriculture (the Summit of the African Union in Maputo, of July 2003). The alignment of international aid to recipient countries' needs, priorities and programmes and the harmonisation of donor support (Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness of March 2005). PAFO, on behalf of farmers in Africa, calls upon the Heads of State and Governments to make from this year A Renewed and Re-energized commitment towards African Agriculture that will see a more stakeholder inclusive process; ownership & leadership by the African stakeholders and resource commitment by the African Governments. Distinguished guests The CAADP process has made unprecedented progress especially in enabling African countries and RECs to coordinate; collaborate and build the capacity of the states in the identification of agriculture investments opportunities and development of plans. We are aware that more than half of the continent has signed CAADP compacts, held business meetings and even developed investment plans and quite a number have received the grants component of the GAFSP funding. We also know that the loans component of the GAFSP funding has probably not been given sufficient visibility for private sector to apply. We are also aware of the enormity of the challenges facing Agriculture sector in Africa that has posed challenges of prioritization, balance between subsidy and business, politics and policies and the inherent institutional arrangements among others, these issues should however not derail us from causing positive impacts on the socio-economic situation of the African farmers We are glad to note that NPCA has formulated a “Result Based Framework for CAADP” that will guide implementation for the next 10 years; we support this framework and as such call on all stakeholders and development partners to align their interventions and contributions to this framework. There is need to have a common and coordinated approach towards Agriculture to cause any development. Distinguished guests; ladies and gentlemen I am also pleased that the theme of this year‟s CAADP partnership platform is “Transforming Africa‟s Agriculture.” As farmers we believe that transformed African agriculture should result into transformed producers (farmers) and this thinking is reflected in our strategic/ business plans. We cannot transform African agriculture if the majority of producers remain poor and struggling for their livelihoods. In a transformed agriculture, there are incentives for all actors in a given value chain including farmers. Agriculture viewed positively as an attractive and profitable venture that is rewarding, and by so doing the resource poor farmers have hope and confidence that neither the middleman nor their government will deprive them off their hard earned living through denial to access market information or un-predictable policies. Transformed agriculture views all partnerships as equal and provides equal opportunities to all including youth and women; it also focuses on wealth generation & self-sustainability – in the long run it does away with the dependency syndrome!. When we come for these conferences we want to discuss how financial products are so many and interest rates are so low that farmers can get enough money to borrow, how we have mechanized our agriculture to the level of designing cheap and affordable small holder traction and related equipment; how we are adding value to more than 70% of agriculture produce, how our borders are so efficient that movement of agriculture goods, services, labor & investments across the borders has been streamlined; that our states comply with regional integration treaties, national & international commitments & obligations in Agriculture, that our agriculture tax policies are predictable and promote local investments, the high level of penetration of ICT and mobile use by farmers, high participation of farmers in policy development and mutual accountability at all levels, in short we want to discuss how the agriculture markets and value chain networks are positively working for and transforming farmers. Distinguished guests; ladies and gentlemen The implication of climate change to the achievement of positive impacts of transformed agriculture cannot be ignored or underestimated. The farmers bear the brunt of climate change! We believe that it is time for Africa to have a comprehensive African wide climate change mitigation & adaptation strategy & program. A strategy that is coherent between national, regional and continental levels taking cognisance of transboundary shared resources. We are initially calling upon African governments to have ONE COMMON HARMONIZED position on Climate change by the time we go to Paris in 2014, we have never understood why Agriculture has struggled to get into the climate change COP discussions, we need political will, collective action and transformative minds in these negotiations and discussions, however we also need to develop home-grown solutions by developing policies, programs and instruments to support the farming community Distinguished guests, ladies and Gentlemen; in conclusion We as farmer organizations, as mentioned earlier have our own „transformative business plans‟ and will support all endeavours that will see Agriculture development in this continent. We commit ourselves to this. In so doing we have been getting actively involved in the CAADP process at all levels including attending the partnership platform meetings; holding consultations with our membership to provide information and guidance on the process, we actually host the CAADP Africa forum every year which pursues different themes and brings forth the different experiences of farmers from the continent – we document these experiences for learning & sharing and this year we shall be hosting the UN‘ International Year of Family Farming’- Africa event; in Lilongwe Malawi in September 2014 –and I take this opportunity on behalf of the PAFO president to extend our invitation to you With those few words, I would want to thank the organizers again for this invitation and the hosts for this warm reception in this beautiful city of Durban, We hope that the outcomes of this conference will transform the lives of the African resource poor farmers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbariu (talk • contribs) 09:45, 29 March 2014 (UTC)