NEPAD to roll out projects worth billions

The New Partnership for Africa’s’ Development (NEPAD) says projectsaligned in the next ten years will not only ensure a dynamic and robust agricultural sector but also  contributes to growth and reduction of food insecurity in Africa.

Speaking in an interview over the week, the head of Nepad Martin Bwalya, said the agency has projects in Agricultural Technical Vocational Education, agribusiness, climate change, fisheries, risks managements and resilience.

“Our objective in the vocational education is to accelerate the number and quality of Africa’s’ skilled manpower towards in the sector, we will bring African agriculture under world class management and production technologies that form an integral part of the agricultural revolution. This will lead to sustainable economic growth, job creation, income generation, poverty alleviation as well as food and nutrition security in the continent.

“Closely related is the aspects which could be categorized as on-the-job training and nurturing programs, such as short management and technical courses for staff, exposure and peer learning undertakings,” he said.

According to Bwalya in addition, there is also the Agribusiness, Private Investment Promotion and Market Access Programme (NAPIP) which seeks to carry out a set of strategic interventions meant to lay the foundation for sustainable economic development through agribusiness, private investment and agricultural trade across Africa. It takes advantage of the spinoff effects of the myriad of other ongoing
parallel initiatives at continental, regional and national levels.

“As such, the NAPIP is needed because it adds value by offering a path for rationalizing the ongoing undertakings. It also adds value by improving coordination, mobilisation, advocacy and communication among various agribusiness actors in Africa. The NAPIP coordinates and facilitates the alignment of contributions to support the implementation of the action points of the NEPAD Agribusiness Strategy.

It outlines a set of strategic interventions meant to lay the foundation for sustainable economic development through agribusiness activities – private investment and agricultural trade
across Africa. Nepad Agribusiness Strategy (NAS) will help in enabling the creation of a conducive environment for increased private sector investment in Africa’s agriculture,” he said.

In addition Bwalya also said the NEPAD Climate Change Fund which will be rolled out for two years from 2014 to 2015 provides grants to projects and activities that aim at strengthening the resilience of African countries to climate change and biodiversity conservation by building national, sub-regional and continental capacity Climate change and its impact on ecosystems and people will be the biggest threat to biodiversity conservation and sustainable development in Africa.

Bwalya further said the Partnership for African Fisheries (PAF) which is a programme of Nepad will work to improve the sustainability of Africa’s fisheries and improve the returns provided by this sector.

PAF is working towards supporting and implementing earlier African fisheries instruments targeting reform.

“Finally the risk management and resilience building provides an integrated strategy that will support rural producers in anticipating preventing and mitigating the impact of natural hazards, market and volatile prices, unpredictable policies and regulations. Countries and regions have up to recently mainly set up ad voc, poorly untimely mechanisms to manage those crises and have moderately attempted to prevent them,” he added.

The initiative which will unfold a multispectral strategy aimed at ensuring stability of production, markets, institutions and policies will require a multispectral engagement including government, private sector, financial institutions.