The FAO Multipartner Programme Support Mechanism (FMM) Project Trade related capacity development for food security and nutrition in Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) is supporting:
Capacity development of policy makers in the ESA region, on the linkages between trade, food security and nutrition, and on the treatment of agriculture in multilateral and regional trade agreements; and
Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia (and technical support in Rwanda) on evidence-based policy-making, and enhanced cross-sectoral coordination in the design and implementation of agricultural trade policies, strategies and agreements.
Capacity building for the evidence-based policy-making
In the context of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, where the eradication of global hunger is a key goal, and trade is recognized as one of the means to achieve these goals, there is an increased need for trade experts to support the trade related development agenda in the region.
In many cases, national and regional institutions have limited technical capacities and resources to map out national, sub-regional and regional level trade priorities and constraints; to empirically assess the implications of their multiple memberships on trade, food security and nutrition; to formulate appropriate mitigation policies and strategies; and to negotiate trade agreements that boost gains from trade and specialization.
The FMM Trade project therefore aims to assist representatives from government and related authorities, who are directly involved in the formulation and implementation of agricultural policies and programmes in the ESA region through targeted e-learning courses. These courses aim to strengthen capacities developing and implementing evidence-based trade policies, and for negotiating trade agreements, taking into consideration both countries’ needs for economic growth and structural transformation, as well as their food security and nutrition concerns.
Related activities
Cross-sectoral coordination for coherence between agricultural and trade policies
Initiatives to promote agricultural productivity, value chain development, employment creation, and food security are often constrained by market and trade-related bottlenecks. These bottlenecks cam result from conflicting market signals provided by misaligned agricultural and trade policies, which is often the case where agricultural and trade policy making processes are undertaken in ‘silos’ with insufficient coordination between policymakers from the two sectors. Addressing such misalignment is therefore fundamental to creating an enabling environment for agricultural development initiatives to work.
The FMM Project seeks to contribute to better coordination in such policymaking processes, thereby promoting greater coherence between trade and agricultural policies. In doing so, FAO, in collaboration with Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) and European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM), engaged in an assessment and validation of the agriculture and trade policy frameworks and their underlying policymaking processes. Following the recommendations from this exercise, for each country, project proposals were prepared, that aimed to address concrete gaps in implementation in common priority areas between agriculture and trade.
