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Agricultural Transformation in Africa: Lessons learnt from the Domestication of the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Processes in Lesotho
Brian Muroyiwa 5
Perennial challenges of food insecurity, poverty, malnutrition and nutritional insecurity plague the African continent. Global development agencies have placed agriculture at the top of Africa continent development agenda as a sector with great potential in addressing Africa’s perennial challenges. The African Heads of State through the African Union Commission (AUC) embarked on an ambitious plan; the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) to transform the fortunes of the agricultural sector on the continent. The African Heads of State and Government made commitments under the Maputo Declaration (2003) and Malabo Declaration (2014) whose implementation would be through CAADP. The AUC implemented CAADP through Africa Union Development Agency (AUDA) formerly New Partnership for Africa Development (NEPAD). Most countries encountered challenges in the implementation of CAADP that made it necessary for AUC through AUDA to provide policy support in the Domestication of CAADP. The AUC/AUDA provided policy support to eight (8) countries that is Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Gabon, Lesotho, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. This paper looks at the lessons learnt from the policy support in domestication of CAADP in Lesotho. The study collected qualitative data through interviews, stakeholder consultation workshops, focus groups and questionnaires. The study analysed the data utilising thematic analysis and the study drew conclusions from the findings and consequently recommendations. The main conclusions of the study were that there is need for high level political ownership of NAIP development process if the process will likely have a chance of success, stakeholder participation is of paramount importance, therefore those leading the process must ensure inclusivity; a NAIP must be evidence based and it is important to conduct analytical work to inform the NAIP development process; good coordination during implementation will eliminate duplication of efforts, governments need to harness domestic resources to finance NAIP implementation to avoid over dependance on donor funds and it was evident that technical assistance helps improve capacity to develop Malabo complaint NAIPs. The main recommendations of the study include that high level decision makers need to be engaged in the NAIP development process right at the beginning for them to support and ensure high level political ownership; government needs to increase budgetary resources to the agriculture sector to avoid misconception that donors must fund implementation of NAIP; countries must strive to improve data collection and management systems which will improve and influence the analytical work that forms part of NAIP formulation; FAO must continue to provide technical assistance to governments in partnership with AUC/AUDA for successful development of Malabo complaint NAIPs on the continent.
The concept of security community has enjoyed enormous currency in the post-Cold War era, whereby regional organisations seek to establish a framework for the prevention and management of violent conflicts in their domains. ECOWAS is one of the regional organisations that has evolved from an economic integration instrument to a functional security architecture through numerous protocols and its Revised Treaty of 1993. This study evaluated the ECOWAS system vis-à-vis the indices of a security community. It adopted a case study research design. Data were generated from secondary sources which involved the review of extant literature. Data were presented qualitatively and analysed with the content analysis technique. The study identified the ECOWAS integrating institutional framework; shared values, norms and practices; the existence of mutual defence and non-aggression pacts; the collective security mechanism; and the coordinating international organisation in the sub-region. It concluded that ECOWAS is a pluralistic security community (PSC) working towards maturity. The study, therefore, recommended the harmonisation of sub-regional socio-political, foreign and defence policies to answer the prevailing national questions-cum-resource governance, as well as the accordance of supranational authority to the ECOWAS Commission as done by the European Union (EU).
It is crucial to examine the historical conflict mediation role that SADC played in Zimbabwe given the country’s continuous political instability and economic catastrophe. Zimbabwe held its first all-race elections in 1980, and ZANU, a liberation movement-turned political party under Robert Mugabe, emerged victorious. ZANU, which later became ZANU-PF after amalgamation with ZAPU, ruled Zimbabwe from 1980 to present. However, in the mid-90s the country began to experience economic and political problems, characterised by a weakening of the economy and political repression of the government’s opponents. Against this background, these issues threatening to unravel Zimbabwe became the focus of attention from the international and African political milieu from the early 2000s onwards. This was because the economic and political crises had already caused, and were causing, Zimbabweans so much anguish and insufferable pain. In view of these problems, this article aims to examine the mediation role of SADC in Zimbabwe. The article uses a qualitative design and case study approach, with SADC mediation in Zimbabwe being the case study, and relies on data that is available in the public domain. SADC employed mediation to carry out a role that is typically undertaken by a regional organisation. However, its involvement was significantly circumscribed by the organisation’s commitment to the principle of non-intervention and the impact of its role limited by the method of mediation, which by nature is peaceable and relies on the consent of the conflict parties. While temporarily halting the political unrest, using mediation in Zimbabwe had the unexpected consequence of entrenching ZANU-PF dominance. As a result, the country relapsed into political instability. It is recommended that when using mediation to manage, de-escalate or end conflicts or crises, SADC must ensure that the settlements struck are not structured in a manner that assists one party in the dispute to gain too much power over the other, as was the case with the ZANU-PF and the MDCs.
When the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic broke out in late 2019, there was a total lockdown and restriction of people in early 2020 by most governments worldwide in order to curb the transmission of the virus. To curtail and contain the spread of the virus and infections, leading pharmaceutical companies of the world, under the auspices of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and particularly Africa, African Union Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, actively participated in various stages of vaccines research and development to boost immunity and to combat the spread of the deadly virus. Within a year, there was a breakthrough whereby different brands of COVID-19 vaccines were developed and ready to be administered. Notably, some African countries participated in some developmental stages of the vaccines. However, when the vaccines were certified for distribution and usage, there were obvious inequalities and discrimination in the distribution. For instance, while the developed countries had easy access to vaccines to vaccinate their people, developing countries, particularly those in Africa, were left unattended, resulting in vaccine apartheid. Vaccine apartheid indicated massive inequality and neglect of African countries, whose citizens were largely unprotected from the virus as many were unvaccinated. Methodologically, using the literature review approach, this paper looked at the vaccine apartheid phenomenon amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the instruments of the African Union (AU) that were easily deployable to develop and manufacture vaccines generally, and how the AU should commence the upscale of its technology.
Various studies have been published that look at the regulatory frameworks for multilateral trade agreements and their economic advantages studies have examined regulatory environments of multilateral trade agreements, as well as the economic benefits of such arrangements. This study departs from the earlier studies by investigating the specific trade and employment benefits of SADC regional agreement on the member countries. Using annual dataset between 2000 and 2018 from both the SADC statistical centre and World Development Indicators, we deployed various diagnostics approaches to control for econometric biases that may render the results spurious and unreliable. The results of the non-tariff barrier model imply that, similar to export trade costs in the tariff model, investment in technology and the removal of tariff barriers are major factors in enhancing intra-regional trade among SADC nations. Thus, it is suggested that policies should be tailored towards improving export-processing infrastructure and related technological advancement in order to improve trade and alleviate unemployment concomitantly.
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