afrol News, 1 September - Ethiopia has become the fourth country to sign the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Programme (CAADP) of the African Union Commission (AUC).

Ethiopia on Friday has signed the CAADP compact country agreement after Rwanda, Togo and Burundi.

Under the agreement, the African Union, together with its partners aims at strengthening agriculture for economic growth as well as poverty reduction.

As articulated by Richard Mkandawire, Head of Agriculture at the NEPAD Secretariat, CAADP is a transformative and reformist agenda to articulate the change of agricultural development strategies.

The signing ceremony was preceded by a two day long round table discussion chaired by Dr Abera Deresa, minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Ethiopia.

Dr Abera observed that as the result of the government’s Agriculture and Rural Development policy and strategy, encouraging results have been shown in improving the livelihood of smallholder farmers. He also underscored “the focus of the Ethiopian CAADP process is to reinforce these achievements through strengthening and adding value to rural economic development and food security under the ongoing plan for accelerated and sustained development to end poverty”.

Rhoda Peace Tumusiime, the AUC Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture said: “The African Union welcomes recent pronouncements by development partners, specially at the G-8 as well as the recent statement by the United States government, reaffirming commitments to boosting their support to African agriculture through the CAADP framework and processes”.

She further explained that “the AUC-NEPAD and the African development financing institutions together with our development partners, shoulder a major responsibility to ensure that agriculture effectively plays its role in advancing economic growth and alleviating poverty on the continent”.

She also advised of the need of better strategies and concrete effort of translating the CAADP framework and the compacts into implementation so as to address the limited sectoral growth, food and nutrition insecurity, climate change, food crisis as well as global financial crisis affecting the continent. “The AUC, the NEPAD Secretariat, RECs and lead pillar institutions are right now consulting extensively to ensure robust support to Member States in this regard,” she added.

By staff writer

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