Last year was set to become pivotal for relations between the Eu (EU) and also the African Union (AU), that have converging interests in many areas, not minimal of which is the fight against climate change and also the promotion of sustainable, job-creating economic growth in Africa.
In March 2022, the ecu Commission proposed a brand new Strategy for Africa, emphasising the EU’s will to bolster links between the two continents.
When presenting the strategy, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for “a new, comprehensive strategy with Africa to boost economic relations, create jobs both in continents and deepen our partnership over the board”.
The Commission's proposed strategy includes five key themes highlighted essential for a successful partnership: green transition and access in compliance with the Paris Agreement on climate change; digital transformation; sustainable growth and jobs, promoting investment through innovative financing and enhancing ‘learning, skills and knowledge, research and innovation capacities, particularly for women and youth, protecting and improving social rights, and eradicating child labour’; peace and governance; along with a balanced, coherent, and comprehensive approach to migration and mobility.
One of the primary areas identified for cooperation is agriculture, which spans – in a single way or any other – all five from the Commission's themes.
According to the Commission's strategy, the EU and Africa must join efforts to achieve the sustainable development objective of zero hunger and address the challenges of nutrition and food security by boosting safe and sustainable agri-food systems.
“A partnership on agriculture would support the growth and development of environment-friendly agricultural practices, promote local production and integrate biodiversity concerns. Including setting sanitary and phytosanitary standards and the protection of natural resources. Trade between the EU and Africa plays an instrumental role supporting opportunities for sustainable food systems,” reads the strategy.
“At the same time, agricultural food production, processing and distribution offers the bulk of direct employment and income in Africa particularly in rural areas contributing thus to a balanced territorial development. Her possibility to provide employment for a significant area of the 800 million African people who are estimated to enter the workforce over the following 30 years.”
Covid intervenes
The strategy was set to become discussed in the next AU-EU Summit with a view to adopting common guidelines. Usually triennial, the summit was scheduled for autumn 2022 in Brussels, but was later postponed to 2022 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Portugal, which held the Presidency from the Council from the EU from January to June this season, originally committed itself to intensifying EU cooperation using the AU and Africa in general, indicating it would take an active part in preparing the EU-African Union Summit.
The summit, however, hasn't yet been rescheduled, and also the task of doing so now falls on Slovenia, which assumes the EU Council presidency on July 1.
The signs aren't good: on its otherwise impressive website outlining its priorities for the presidency, a search for 'Africa' offers no results.
The world's second most populous continent doesn't seem like priority for that Slovenian presidency.
Nevertheless, the summit’s postponement has provided more time for African states themselves to deepen discussions to be able to forge a united response to the EU's proposed strategy.
In the concept of agriculture, one of the African organisations leading those discussions may be the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
AGRA began in 2006 as an Africa-based and Africa-led organisation that works inside the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), Africa’s policy framework for agricultural transformation, wealth creation, food security and nutrition, economic growth and prosperity.
Its president, Agnes Kalibata, states that Africa should move away from being “synonymous with hunger” because “we aren't a hungry continent”.
“We have best resources in the world, hardworking people and we're focusing on the very best private sector ever,” she says.
She adds, however, that “we have to pay attention to what we are doing. We cannot just produce food and start business without recognising the environment is begging to buckle under the weight we're putting on it.”
Apollos Nwafor, AGRA's v . p . for policy assuring capability, believes that policies need to support private sector players within the agriculture sector – particularly SMEs – through lower interest rates for facilities and policy predictability for exchange agriculture.
“Policies need to support provision of financing incentives for SMEs within the agriculture sector and developing resilience for smallholder farmers,” he says. “Increasing government investment in the sector will drive banking institutions to increase their portfolio of lending towards the sector, which currently lies at less than one percent.”
Time to fast-track digitalisation
Another priority, adds Nwafor, is fast-tracking of the digitalisation of agriculture in Africa.
“The global workforce is digitising faster than ever before. Post-Covid, automation will take an extremely central stage. The fast cell phone penetration in Africa has potential for driving innovation and building a tech savvy workforce in the sector.”
According to Vladimir Rakhmanin, assistant director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), collaboration is key to implementing digital solutions.
“A comprehensive national strategy, which can prevent e-agriculture projects from being implemented in isolation leading to duplication of efforts and resources, and instead develop efficiency gains from intra-sector and cross-sector synergies,” he wrote inside a landmark 2022 paper looking at e-agriculture in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
“In addition, a participatory planning and strategic approach in ICT applications in agriculture is adding to improving inter-institutional collaboration, transparency and trust.”
It's precisely this sort of collaborative strategy that organisations such as AGRA wish to implement in Africa.
In May, it signed a deal with Aceli Africa, an industry incentive facility that unlocks capital for agricultural small- and medium-enterprises (SMEs) in East Africa, to enhance capital flows to SMEs in the agriculture sector and support a financially inclusive agricultural transformation across Africa.
AGRA and Aceli have committed to jointly work together to test and scale up innovations that substantially drive down the cost and chance of financing SMEs in the agriculture space.
Digital solutions, says AGRA's v . p . of strategic partnerships Vanessa Adams, will be at the core from the agreement.
“This partnership will also focus on implementing digital solutions to make financial record keeping and reporting more efficient and reliable that will improve the bankability of the SMEs,” she says.
Tapping EU know-how
Europe includes a great deal of expertise to offer in the field of digitalisation: know-how that Africa would do well to utilize as and when the EU and AU formalise their partnership.
As area of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which governs agriculture in the EU, member states have to use the Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) to assure that transactions financed by the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund under the CAP are in fact carried out and executed correctly, and also to prevent and deal with irregularities.
In physical terms, IACS includes a number of computerised and interconnected databases which are accustomed to receive and process aid applications and respective data. It offers for a unique identification system for farmers, an identification system covering all agricultural areas, an identification system for payment entitlements, along with a system for that identification and registration of animals.
The EU has also created ICT-AGRI, whose main objective is to strengthen European research within the section of precision farming and also to develop a common European research agenda.
AGRA views agriculture as the single greatest chance to deliver inclusive economic growth, jobs, and health towards the African continent. It says that no region in the world has built a modern economy without first strengthening its agricultural sector.
Europe knows this better than anyone, which makes Slovenia's insufficient focus on both Africa and agriculture a setback.
The next EU Council presidency, however, will belong to France, which besides retaining a vital interest in Africa is also among the world's agricultural heavyweights.