The choices identified in the four strategic themes described above have to be implemented and made operational in the various regions of Africa. To demonstrate the required activities of the various stakeholders in the regions, innovative new participatory science and technology pilot programs should be introduced in each of the four priority farming systems identified by the IAC Panel. Many technological opportunities exist for enhancing productivity and profitability on a sustainable basis. Enhancing productivity in these systems will reap positive consequences in improving the nutrition of a high percentage of starving children, including those who are among the most malnourished on the continent.

The IAC Panel believes that a set of such pilot programs will be needed to unleash the latent agricultural productivity in Africa, leading to an enhancement of family food supply and income security. These experimental programs can serve as inspiring illustrations of the potential of the African agriculture system. The United Nations Secretary-General, in consultation with the African Union, should identify the most appropriate regional, national and international institutions to implement the recommended innovative science and technology pilot programs, which are designed to shape Africa's agricultural future. It is crucial that there be strong African involvement at every step.

The IAC Panel recommends the following action for initiating a series of innovative pilot programs for enhancing African agriculture:

• Employ the IAC Panel's recommended strategies to implement a series of Participatory Science and Technology Pilot Programs. Within the pilot schemes, plans should be developed that stimulate convergence and synergy among the range of programs designed to achieve the following United Nations Millennium Development Goals:
  
  
  1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger through a shift from unskilled to skilled work and through sustainable farming system intensification, diversification and value-addition.
  2. Achieve universal primary education.
  3. Promote gender equality and empower the technical training of women.
  4. Improve maternal health and nutrition to avoid the birth of low-weight babies.
  5. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.
  6. Ensure conservation and the enhancement of basic life-support systems including land, water, forests, biodiversity and the atmosphere.

 

• Science and technology pilot programs should be introduced where the following components of the production-processing-marketing-consumption chain can be developed in a participatory mode:

1. An assessment of indigenous technology options relevant to improvement of productivity and food security.
2. An assessment of market potentials and constraints for existing and prospective commodities in the farming systems.
3. An assessment of the scope for the following new technology options to enhance productivity and food security:

• Integrated nutrient and soil fertility enhancement;
• Integrated pest management;
• Small-scale water harvesting and efficient and economic use through micro-irrigation systems of delivery of water and nutrients;
• Biotechnological applications like improved genetic strains (including genetically modified organisms, where relevant), biofertilizers and biopesticides;
• Use of improved farm implements and appropriate mechanization for increasing labour productivity, reducing drudgery and ensuring timely farm operations;
• Introduction of appropriated post-harvest processing, storage and marketing techniques;
• Promotion of non-farm employment through the introduction of technology options for adding economic value to primary products and through agribusiness enterprises based on micro-credit;
• An information and communication program to provide location-specific information relating to meteorological, management and marketing factors and to promote genetic, quality and trade literacy among smallholder rural farm families;
• Establishment of farmer field schools for integrated pest, disease and weed management; integrated water and fertility management; and the other aspects of production and post-harvest technologies based on the principle of learning-by-doing;
• Promotion of institutional structures like cooperatives and self-help groups that can confer the power of scale to smallholders at the production and post-harvest phases of farm operations.

 

• For each pilot program, explore the scope for other institutional innovations such as:

1. Promotion of a participatory knowledge quadrangle coalition led by smallholders and involving them with universities, national agricultural research institutions and extension agencies to explore new modes of partnership.
2. Identification of candidates for African centres of agricultural research excellence (ACARE) that would serve the interests of smallholders.
3. Stimulation of public-private partnerships that would address priority constraints that cannot be alleviated by independent activities and that are aimed at building trust and synergies.
4. Identification of the constraints at the national, regional, continental and global levels that can prevent the realization of the promise and potential of the Participatory Science and Technology Pilot Programs to improve agricultural productivity and food security at the local level.

The IAC Panel suggests that interdisciplinary teams from the quadrangle of national agricultural research systems, universities, extension services and farmers' organizations be constituted to prepare business plans for policy changes and research in each of the four priority farming systems described previously. Nothing succeeds like success, and hence the sites for the initial pilot programs should be developed where there is a socioeconomic, political, scientific and ecological environment conducive to the achievement of the goals of this program. For each pilot program, a local farmers' advisory council, involving both men and women, should be constituted to assume ownership and undertake monitoring and evaluation.

<< Previous - [Page 14 of 171] - Next >>