I have enjoyed reading through the posts from colleagues and would just like to make a few comments:

@Ben: Fully agree with the multi-stakeholder approach.  I don’t agree with letting international actors take lead in M&E to ensure neutrality; we need to own these processes and we need to develop local capacity an expertise. Relying on international partners means that we will forever be dependent.
 
@Brad: I like your insightful comments and I am rather curious about your positioning of government as a regulator ; if you mean government as an enforcer or policy, then I fully agree. I also agree that broader participation = success with the caveat that everyone is speaking the same language and moving in the same direction. I am also curious as to why you would remove government from the evaluation process?

@emligot: I like the example of the private sector engagement with farmers and fully agree that it is essential to get farmers buy-in and trust

@Ngwanani: do our government ICT departments have the capacity to provide technical leadership? Should they even take on this role or should they rather focus on the policy dimension?

@all: we need to be careful about this assumption that “International  Agencies provide the funding?” – do we want to maintain this status quo?

Happy Birthday (belatedly) Mawaki!

I fully agree with the perspectives put forward by Brad and I would like to add a few more issues.

  With regard to policy formulation I think one of the challenges I see  is that policy/strategy formulation is seen as a once-through and/or once-off process. What I mean by this is that there is a straight line progression from one step to another until the final product is delivered. I think that the formulation process should be iterative on two levels: at each step (from issue identification, determination of options, choice of strategy etc), there should be a deliberate process of iteration and on the second level, once the policy/strategy is formulated, there should also be a deliberate process of iteration.

A second challenge I see is that there is an over-reliance on foreign expertise. This might somehow explain the cut-and-paste policies and strategies that we see which have a developed country orientation.

A third challenge is that there is not enough attention paid to the development of capacity to provide an evidence-base for policy formulation. There should be more investment in research and in the development of specialised institutions (policy research institutes and think tanks) that can analyse policies and advise our governments accordingly. Currently, in most countries, this work is done by institutions based in the developed world.

A fourth challenge which has been alluded to already has to do with the politics of our economies and the political instability that is prevalent in most African countries. Short-sightedness and  a culture of “ rubbishing” policies and strategies developed by previous administrations can also prove to be a challenge.

With regard to politics, I would like to mention one aspect in Malawi that is both a challenge and an opportunity.  Our first president of Malawi held the ministerial portfolio for agriculture and in doing so, raised the profile of agriculture in the country and ensured that adequate resources were provisioned for this sector. This was emulated by the third president (I cannot recall if the second president also took on this role) to the extent that he introduced farm input subsidies at time when development partners were discouraging this practice. Malawi recorded a bumper harvest and was hailed as an example for others to emulate.  So, clearly the idea of the President holding the ministerial portfolio has its benefits as the president can use his/her position of power to influence policy. On the down-side though , there is a danger that due to his/her position, the president may not be easily accessible to major stakeholders in the sector. (Currently, the agriculture portfolio is not held by the president)

 Another thing that I have observed is that there is little documentation on the policy processes in our countries. An ordinary citizen would be hard-pressed to understand how policies are implemented and therefore cannot fully exercise his right to hold the leadership accountable. Also, I think such information is important even for our policy makers themselves – it would seem that most knowledge is handed down on-the-job. (An example of the type of document one would like to see is this one from Ireland: http://www.ofmdfmni.gov.uk/practical-guide-policy-making.pdf).

With regard to implementation, the main issues that I would cite are:

• weak systems of oversight and accountability
• not many policy research organisations
• external influences (donor-driven)
• multiplicity of policy documents (lack of policy coherence)
• absence of a central agency to coordinate implementation
• Weak monitoring and review mechanisms

As the case of Malawi has already been discussed, I will look at the case of my host country South Africa. The strategic plan of the Department of Communications (http://www.info.gov.za/view/DownloadFileAction?id=144159) does not make any reference to agriculture; the strategic plan for the Department of Agriculture (http://www.info.gov.za/view/DownloadFileAction?id=146747) does not mention e-agriculture or ICT in agriculture. What I noticed in the Dept of Agriculture strategic plan is  that they have some components related to ICTs - mostly in terms of faciltiating internal communications. This reminded me of a conversation I had with someone about how the interpretation of ICT in Agriculture (or any other sector) and notions such as e-government are often taken to mean the equipping of government departments with ICT equipment. While this is not a bad thing in and of itself, it is important to ensure that there is common understanding of the terminology.

I also had a look at South Africa's broadband policy and while it mentions economic and social beneifts - with specific mention of SMMEs, health, education, government services - there is no mention of the agricultural sector.


IST Africa has put together a collection of ICT and S&T strategies for some countries available at:
http://www.ist-africa.org/home/default.asp?page=ictpolicies

Another listing is available at: http://www.oafrica.com/ict-policy/african-nations-with-active-national-…

Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this discussion. In answer to the question posed, e-agriculture strategies are indeed needed for the agricultural sector because while national ICT strategies may provide general direction a specific strategy for the agricultural sector allows for more specific articulation. It also allows the stakeholders in the agricultural sector to internalise and own the process. It is however important to ensure that the e-agriculture strategies are developed in a way that is coherent and consistent with national development plans and national ICT strategies.
As has been noted by some discussants, most countries have national ICT strategies which directly or indirectly make references to agriculture.  The question I would like to pose is: were stakeholders from the agriculture sector consulted prior to these issues being put in the ICT strategy?  Coming from Malawi I am glad that to see the contribution from Henry and happy to see that the Ministry of Agriculture is tracking developments on the national ICT strategy; however, it would appear that there is little involvement of the ministry in the actual development of the strategy.
A second issue that is worth highlighting has to do with implementation and follow-up. I think that we are very good at developing strategies but implementation becomes a bit of a challenge. So, when we develop e-agriculture strategies we need to carefully think through the implementation and this is why it is important to ensure that all key stakeholders are involved in the process.
There has been mention of regional strategies and I think that this is also a good idea. The issue at hand is whether the strategies should be developed top-down or bottom up i.e. should national strategies be informed by regional strategies or vice versa? My initial thoughts are that regional strategies should inform national strategies; however the prioritisation of issues at regional level should take into account national aspirations. Also, regional strategies should aim to address issues that are best dealt with at regional level and leave room for national strategies to deal with more localised issues at country-level.
Another aspect that should be considered when developing e-strategies is the measures and indicators of progress – how will we know how well or badly we are doing? How will we know what interventions need to be made as we are implementing our strategies to ensure that we achieve the desired targets?