“The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) is a pan-African vehicle that translates the vision of the NEPAD Planning and Co-ordinating Agency (NPCA) into an operational framework to guide agriculture-led development. CAADP’s overall goal is to improve livelihoods, food security and environmental resilience in Africa’s largely agrarian economies. Against this background, the unprecedented rise in international support for CAADP is an indicator of the new focus on global agricultural development, which is also reflected in the increasing relevance of meeting the first UN Millennium Development Goal (‘eradicate extreme poverty and hunger’). The opportunities for greater inclusiveness inherent in CAADP augur well for the African Union–NPCA in the sense that this will result in fairer and greater ownership among stakeholders (including civil society, nongovernmental and farmers’ organisations). Although there has been increasing support for CAADP, strong leadership has been in short supply across the continent, thereby restricting the policy space available to optimise such rising support. This briefing identifies the urgent need to strengthen the capacities of policy experts along the CAADP policy processes value chain in order for Africa to take full advantage of this increasing support.”
