Nigeria, 7 others to benefit from FAO’s agric policy initiative

Nigeria and seven other African countries are set to benefit from a new phase of key agricultural policy monitoring and analysis initiative of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), focused on supporting reforms in Sub-Saharan African countries, as they face an array of global challenges.

 

 

The initiative, which is Phase 3 of the Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) programme, received an $11 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to continue working to support the countries in making more informed, evidence-based policy and investment decisions.

 

 

Its key goals are identifying priority areas for scaling up investment, achieving more transparent markets and trade, inclusive rural transformation and more nutritious agrifood systems.

 

 

According to a statement by the FAO, the programme became more vital as governments grapple with tighter budgets in the wake of COVID-19, and the impact of the war in Ukraine.

 

Apart from Nigeria, the statement noted that the funds would help other countries like Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda and Uganda, who seek to use data-driven ways to guide their reforms towards inclusive agricultural transformation and economic recovery.

 

 

Remarking at the programme launch, the FAO Chief Economist, Máximo Torero Cullen, said, “Global agricultural markets are becoming increasingly disrupted, leading to price spikes in food, energy, and increasing fertilizer prices, that not only hurt farmers and producers but also consumers and families, because of the lack of capacity to access food.”

 

 

According to Cullen, to avoid a food crisis, countries must monitor what is happening and react with timely policies.

“We need double-dimension action: short-term to respond to these shocks, and medium- to long-term to achieve the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals. MAFAP is a highly effective tool to help countries to do that,” he added.

 

 

The FAO Chief Economist noted that the launch comes amid a growing focus on policy monitoring and repurposing, meaning the redirection of support for agricultural producers, which in many cases hinders the transformation towards healthier, more sustainable and equitable agri-food systems.

 

 

Also, he noted that the initiative follows last year’s UN Food Systems Summit and a landmark report by FAO, UNEP and UNDP on repurposing agricultural support for food systems transformation.

 

 

To support the new phase, the FAO said it has developed new policy tools and advanced economic modelling to help governments determine if budgets on food and agriculture are optimally spent to ensure food security and nutrition, boost economic growth and speed up inclusive agricultural transformation.

 

The new policy tools and advanced economic modelling would also help governments to better understand how national policies affect the prices of commodities or products along the value chain and help them prioritise the policies and investments that have the largest positive effects on poverty reduction, employment, agricultural growth and the affordability of healthy diets.

 

 

Speaking, the FAO Deputy Director of Agrifood Economics, Marco V. Sánchez, said,

“This new phase of the programme relies on state-of-the-art policy modelling tools that FAO has developed and are well documented in highly reputed international journals to ensure quality control, transparency and replicability.”

 

Source: Agro Nigeria