Strengthening capacities for enabling policy environment to support family farmers in Africa
FAO and RUFORUM collaborating in the context of the United Nations Decade of Family Farming (UNDFF) 2019 – 2028
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is collaborating with the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) to strengthen the capacities of state and non-state actors to develop and implement public policies for family farming in Africa.
Family farmers rely on family labour for production and other farm operations and produce almost 80% of the world’s food in value terms. In Africa, they dominate the agriculture sector providing livelihoods for over 70% of the population, and are central to a sustainable future for agriculture, eradicating hunger and poverty, achieving social cohesion, employment, and sustainable use of natural resources. However, many of them are poor, food insecure, and live below the national poverty line.
Supporting family farming in Africa through, among others, creating an enabling policy environment, is critical to ensuring adequate resource allocation, effective and inclusive governance and institutional arrangements, and placing permanent solutions toward more resilient and sustainable agrifood systems.
FAO and RUFORUM are collaborating to organize capacity development activities aimed to create an enabling policy environment to support family farmers in Africa through the delivery of training programs based on the “learning framework for inclusive, integrated and innovative public policy cycles for family farming,” the first global product developed by FAO and IFAD to support the implementation of UNDFF 2019 – 2028.
The two partners have co-organized training programs in Uganda (November 2021) and Zambia (April 2022), introducing participants from state and non-state institutions to versatile tools, instruments, and competencies to build, implement, monitor and evaluate relevant, effective, and context-specific family farming centred policies. Participants at the Uganda event have established the “Family Farming Policy Champions – Uganda” to carry the activities initiated during the training, while in Zambia consultations are ongoing on the nature of the post-training activities to be implemented.
Positive feedback on the training events has been received and here is what some participants had to say:
"I didn't know what family farming was, but after the training, I appreciated it and every day in my work as we plan for national development, we take cognisance of the contribution of family farmers to the food and nutrition security and eventually human capital development" - Grace Bwengye, Agricultural Planner, National Planning Authority, Uganda.
"The concept of family farmers was new to me, but I have learned and realized the significance of family farming in agriculture. Because of their importance, policies targeted at family farmers should be prioritized. With regards to ZAYEFA, my main take is to develop systems of awareness on the significance of youth participation in policy formulation and to stimulate meaningful interest in various policy issues in agriculture" - Malama Malama, Vice President of Zambia Young Emerging Farmers Association (ZAYEFA), Zambia
"This training has been enriching, insightful, and eye-opening. It augments a lot of work that we (JCTR) have been doing and it also indicates how much work remains to be done to see this to fruition. This training also brought out significant actors and how each of them is important. I look forward to seeing this progress beyond the training" - Chama Bowa, Program Manager for Social and Economic Development Program, Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR), Zambia.
FAO and RUFORUM established a formal partnership through a Memorandum of Understanding in 2017 and renewed it in 2020. The collaboration on family farming-related activities is in the context of UNDFF, which serves as a framework for countries to develop public policies and investments to support family farming from a holistic perspective, unleashing the transformative potential of family farmers to contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
