The continental initiative was officially launched in Yaounde on Thursday July 12.
Cameroon has officially adhered to the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme; an Africa owned and led initiative working to boost agricultural productivity in the continent. The framework, which seeks to help African countries reach a higher path of economic growth through agriculture-led development, was officially launched in Yaounde yesterday in a ceremony chaired by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Essimi Menye, representing the Prime Minister.
Mr Essimi Menye said the comprehensive framework, reached by African Heads of States in Maputo in 2003 through a declaration on agriculture and food security in the continent, is timely for Cameroon that seeks to revolutionise its agriculture. “This is a comprehensive programme detailing actions to be taken to develop agriculture in Africa. The framework is expected to take our country’s agriculture to a level at which it can ably compete with that of our countries,” the Minister said. The country, he added, needs to make existing programmes compatible with the continental comprehensive framework making sure that what it does makes the country autonomous in feeding its population.
Like other speakers who mounted the rostrum to hail the framework, Mariam Sow Soumare, Principal Programme Officer at the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, NEPAD, said it is more about the processes and mechanisms that could boost agricultural productivity and performance, making sure that all actors are involved and that their needs are taken into account in the process. “It is a framework within which different programmes and projects will be defined,” she said. As such, NEPAD, she added, is going to be assisting Cameroon in putting in place the mechanisms that will make it work. This will be in terms of capacity building, mobilisation of partnerships as well as implementing the different projects that will be defined. “We want to speed up the process because Cameroon is coming in very late. Once the documents are ready, we will work to produce the investment plan,” she added. The country team of the framework that will work for Cameroon benefit from the initiative was also installed during the ceremony, attended among others by other cabinet ministers. The four-fold pillar framework deals with land and water management, market access, food supply and hunger as well as agricultural research.
