MAFAP wraps up 2023 with 7 agrifood reforms and 8 new policy support requests
The Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) team is ending 2023 as one of its busiest and most successful years in terms of helping MAFAP partner countries reform their food and agricultural policies, having contributed to 7 reforms in 4 countries in 2 continents.
Seven agrifood reforms in 2023
Over the course of 2023, the MAFAP programme has provided policy analysis and support to inform policymaking, paving the way for 7 reforms on inclusive agricultural transformation and food security and nutrition for the following countries:
- Bangladesh: A policy analysis to reduce the volatility of onion prices through targeted investments in onion storage, quality, and post-harvest practices.
- Mozambique: Devising a new minimum reference price for producers of cashew nuts, one of Mozambique’s top exports in terms of value.
- Mozambique: Policy and investment analysis to address challenges in the oilseeds sector for new regulation on the production and trade of oilseeds, including harmonization of tariffs on imports of unrefined and refined edible oil and promotion of contract farming.
- Mozambique: Designing a price stabilization mechanism to address the domestic cotton sector’s vulnerability to global market instability and to act as a cushion for producers’ income when international prices deviate from farm-gate prices.
- Rwanda: Boosting coffee productivity through the rejuvenation of coffee trees with a policy roadmap to replace and rehabilitate coffee trees.
- Rwanda: Improving farm-gate prices for around 300 000 Irish potato farmers through a new price-setting mechanism.
- Zimbabwe: Reducing horticultural food loss and waste through targeted investments with businesses cases for a decentralized tomato processing plant, a packhouse in central Harare for tomato, banana, guava and mango, and a decentralised packhouse for bananas.
Eight new policy support requests were received from the Governments of:
- Burkina Faso to work on identifying pressing reforms to speed up inclusive agricultural transformation.
- Ghana to work on reducing off-farm food loss and waste in the maize and rice value chains.
- Ghana to prioritize value chains for the country’s Food Systems Development Strategy and Investment Plan.
- Mozambique to help devise a self-financing funding model for the National Irrigation Institute.
- Rwanda to carry out an analysis of the honey value chain to boost honey production.
- Uganda to analyse priority investment areas for the marketing strategy under the Parish Development Model.
- Uganda to evaluate how competitive the country’s dairy exports are.
- Uganda to provide policy evidence on priority commodities to invest in for the Agro-Industrialization Programme under the 4th National Development Plan.
The programme’s broad portfolio of agrifood reforms currently has 28 active policy requests from governments in the analytical work stage or country engagement stage, covering areas such as outpricing, international trade, processing, production inputs, output aggregation and marketing, food security and nutrition, and strategies and investment plans. Of the 28 policy support requests since the current phase of MAFAP (2022-2027), 22 directly contribute to shaping inclusive markets for farmers and producers, 16 help drive inclusive agricultural transformation, and 15 to are designed to better promote nutritious food systems.
All that and not to mention...
The programme’s core policy monitoring on public expenditure on food and agriculture and on price incentives for selected agricultural commodities is going strong. Stay tuned for a number of Policy Monitoring Review (PMR) publications coming in 2024!