At the request of the NEPAD Steering Committee, the NEPAD Secretariat has prepared in cooperation with FAO the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) of NEPAD. The CAADP, first endorsed by African Ministers of Agriculture at a special NEPAD-focused session of the FAO Regional Conference for Africa in Rome, June 2002, was later adopted by the Second Ordinary Session of the African Union (AU) Assembly of Heads of State and Government in Maputo, July 2003 (the Maputo Summit).
The NEPAD-CAADP initiative is a manifestation of African governments' commitment to address issues of growth in the agricultural sector, rural development and food security. Perceived by all stakeholders as an African-conceived, led and owned process, the NEPAD-CAADP offers an integrated framework of development priorities that comprises five pillars:
- expansion of area under sustainable land management and reliable water control systems;
- improvement of rural infrastructure and trade-related capacities for better market access;
- enhancement of food supply and reduction of hunger (including emphasis on emergencies and disasters that require food and agricultural responses);
- development of agricultural research, technology dissemination and adoption to sustain long-term productivity growth; and
- sustainable development of livestock, fisheries and forestry resources (added after the Maputo Summit of July 2003).
The Maputo Summit unanimously adopted the "Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security in Africa" and thereby provided strong political support to CAADP. The Declaration committed member countries of the AU to, inter alia, implement as a matter of urgency the CAADP and to allocate at least ten percent of national budgetary resources within five years (i.e. by 2008/09) towards the agricultural sector and rural development.
In order to facilitate discussion of the approach and scheduling of CAADP implementation, FAO hosted meetings in Rome, in September and December 2003, with the participation of representatives of African governments, the African Union, NEPAD Steering Committee, regional economic organizations, the donor community and civil society. FAO offered to assist in follow-up and some forty-nine African Member Governments accepted its technical and financial support to the following three activities:
As of end January 2006, preparations of NMTIPs and BIPPS, as well as in-country multistakeholder and multisectoral consultations have been completed for thirty-eight countries; work on the remaining countries continues.
