Brussels briefings cont'

The Briefing I told you about last week was a great success. It was a good opportunity to collaborate once again with the ACP Secretariat, the European Commission (EC) and Europe’s Forum on International Cooperation (EUFORIC). We discussed the EU/EC initiative on “Advancing African Agriculture” (AAA or 'triple A'). The briefing attracted some 100 participants from ACP and EU Embassies in Brussels, the EC, the EU Council, the European Parliament, civil society groups and more importantly also regional African farmers’ organisations’ representatives.

The timing was good as yesterday, October 17, was the UN’s "International Day for the Eradication of Poverty"

The programme as well as the very interesting presentations and discussions are here.

Let me just highlight a few aspects for you: have a look at the presentation of Mr. Steve Wiggins (ODI). You will see that he shows the encouraging news that there are 17 African countries amongst those countries with the world’s fastest growing agriculture. And he highlighted the need for ensuring a better start for the new generation.

Mr. Ides DeWillebois from IFAD reminded the audience that most of the rural population in Africa is net buyers. He concluded that this calls for an increase in agricultural productivity. He also mentioned the huge potential of irrigation as some 90 % of the agricultural land is still rain fed and only a small 10 % is under irrigation. Agriculture is definitively not only good to alleviate poverty but it also pays.

Huge potential is also provided by reducing post harvesting losses in African countries as stated by the Ambassador of Uganda (let me add here that in a country like Ethiopia for cereal production the post harvest losses can be of between 20 – 40 % representing important quantities that could replace food aid in many cases).

In his reaction to the AAA paper Mr. Schmalbruch from Concord stated that before agriculture should be made fit to serve export markets as focused by the paper it should be made competitive to satisfy local markets first. This requires inclusion of local stakeholders, farmers – most of whom are women.

Several remarks referred to the natural risks associated with agricultural production (e. g. droughts, flooding, and locust). This was the occasion for me to inform the audience on the Agricultural Risk Management workshop organised during the Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA) with several interesting presentations. (see my post on the CWA).

Some critical questions and remarks touched on farmer’s involvement in the development of this AAA initiative and their ownership. The EC could reassure the audience that this initiative was prepared as a close response to expectations expressed by African farmers.

The briefing gave us the opportunity to highlight the areas where CTA has a comparative advantage and will play its role as a platform for implementing AAA and to facilitate access to information, exchange of experiences (lessons learnt) in close collaboration with our regional and local partners in Africa. CAADP, FARA, and many others have their role to play. It is true also for African governments that need to invest far more into agriculture to meet the increasing demand from the high population growth rates.
70 – 80 % of the population in African countries make their living out of agriculture that contributes significantly to the GDPs of African countries (some 20 – 30 %) and maybe twice as much if the whole value chain is taken into consideration.

Still I believe that awareness raising on the importance of agriculture is necessary in order to trigger higher investments in agriculture as this was the case in countries such as China, Brazil or India. The World Bank Development Report 2008 is focusing on agriculture and rural development and will hopefully contribute to this challenge. The World Bank office in Brussels launched this report officially during a gathering on the 19/10/2007 in Brussels.

If you have any constructive views on AAA, please write to me.

The Caribbean Week of Agriculture in Jamaïca

I cool – Jamaica saying for “I am fine”. Jamaica - No problems, we have only a situations to deal with, seems to be another Jamaican wisdom – or Ya man (the typical Jamaican amplifier after each sentence said by a Rastafarian).

Just back from the Caribbean Week of Agriculture , an event that takes place every year I must admit the Jamaicans did an excellent job given the circumstances: hurricane Dean devastated the island not long ago and there was a change of government.

You may wonder, what is this Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA)? It is the annual meeting of the Caribbean Ministers of Agriculture. This year’s theme was “Agriculture – Harvesting wealth through tourism", highlighting the natural synergies between the two sectors. For example, how can tourism be used to promote agricultural production?

As in all meetings, there were also presentations and parallel meetings. This was the case of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) officials who gathered on this occasion. Interesting also as they discussed the Jagdeo initiative spearheaded by the President of Guyana and looking critically at progress achieved in improving agriculture’s performance in the Caribbean.

I was very interested also by the presentations made at the Agricultural Risk Management Workshop. The Caribbean is prone to natural disasters like frequent hurricanes coupled with heavy rains and/or flooding, landslides etc. This results in loss of lives, huge devastation and loss of agricultural production. So, is there anything that can be done? Yes… Dr. Dunstan Campbell, FAO informed the CWA on the Risk insurance scheme that the Bahamas is about to develop with FAO’s assistance. Dr. Mark Wenner from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) on the other hand, provided an interesting general overview of why “agriculture is amongst the most risky businesses" and therefore banks and insurance companies are quite hesitant in offering insurance schemes for farmers. It has not been mentioned though that agricultural insurance schemes work apparently quite efficiently in other parts of the world like, for example, in India.

Like every year, there was also a trade show and exhibition that showcased agricultural products mainly from Jamaica. This gave me the opportunity to discover various producers of Jamaican coffee like Wallenford growing quality Arabica coffee in the Blue Mountains originally coming from the highlands of Ethiopia.

The week ended with a field trip. We visited amongst others the “Circle B Farm” (for private parties, wedding receptions, farm tours, accommodation and camping) managed by Bob Miller who earned an impressive array of awards for being a positive example of an agro-tourism farm. He combines educational aspects with organic farming and of course his big smile. If you are a “backpacker” you find fine accommodation coupled with a lesson on how to produce your own rum or insight in the possibilities of how one can use banana plants for various purposes such as making paper out of the fibre.

I am back in Wageningen, the Netherlands after a busy week filled with liquid sunshine (it is still the rainy season in Jamaica). And, I must admit, an all
inclusive stay in a (oops….) "five star prison" termed "all exclusive" by the representative of the Bob Marley TV station.

Ya man – share with me your Jamaican wisdom. Thanks in advance.

A second Brussels briefing

So here we are again! There is a new briefing today on rural development and more specifically on progress in Advancing African Agriculture. This choice of topic is linked to a communication from the European Commission which you may wish to read here. I am interested in knowing what you think, those of you working in the field and actively involved in agriculture in Africa. So send me your comments, this is a great opportunity! And I will get back to you at the beginning of next week with my own comments on the event.

Web2forDev - about tools and a community

Following a hectic week at the Web2fordev conference in Rome, my head is still buzzing with everything that I heard and I am speechless in admiration. It was an overwhelming event indeed.

When we travelled to Rome I just had two questions:
(1)Was it going to be just another upbeat conference - this time on web2 tools – with the usual eclectic mix of presentations?
(2)More importantly: how does this new generation of tools improve communication for rural communities in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries?

After the event and summing up my impressions, I must say that the conference was a superb marketplace of ideas. It gave rich insights on all the hyped web2 tools that many of us are using in one way or another such as blogs, wikis, RSS, YouTube, Flickr, various Google tools, Facebook and of course Skype, to name but a few.

It was interesting to see the multiplicity of uses for the different tools. For instance del.icio.us is capable of so much more than just putting your “favourites” on the web. It is when social bookmarking, tagging, blogs, websites and wikis are used in combination that gives the web its power. And it makes us all communities of shared interests.

Happily, we did not only take delight in discovering these tools. Many presenters pointed out how these tools can be applied so that people communicate better with one other. Like Mrs. Ednah Karamagi from BROSDI, a Ugandan NGO, gave an impressive demonstration how they use web2 tools in combination with mobile phones to exchange information between villages, sending SMS from the mobile phones to blogs and/or Wikis (e. g. market information – someone who wants to sell tomatoes), a question and answer service or telephone conferencing between village groups via mobile phones.

I give this example as I think it is an outstanding and extremely encouraging experience. You can get a full overview of the plenary presentations here.

For me, this conference was a great opportunity for networking, where we could put faces to those who have exchanged their views over the intensive year-long preparation period. Many participants freely admitted that what they had learned at this conference has changed their mindsets. I predict that all those who participated will be working differently from now on.

Is there anything to quibble about? Of course there is. Apart from my good intentions to organise some of our work differently, I fear that I will have to spent even more working hours looking into my PC screen in order to catch up to the ‘geeks’ applying all these fancy tools. This risks further weakening my eyesight. For those who “Just can’t get e-nough” I came across an interesting article talking about cyberchondria, how technology is turning us into obsessive wrecks and about “modern maladies” (please click here if you are interested). And if that isn’t bad enough, others controversially point to the potential damage that web2.0 could have on our culture, something that will be discussed for some time to come.

For me the message is clear: just join us and benefit from the rich lessons being learned around the world.