African Union Commission, Senior Policy Officer and acting Head of the Rural Economy Division, Dr. Janet Edeme, visited the Alliance for Commodity Trade in Eastern and Southern Africa (ACTESA) Secretariat on February 27, 2012 to discuss the implementation of the Abuja Declaration on fertilizer.
Dr. Edeme met with acting ACTESA CEO, Dr. Chungu Mwila, the COMESA Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and other COMESA and ACTESA staff.
Dr. Edeme explained that her mission was specifically centred on Resolution 12 of the Abuja Declaration, which, calls for the AUC and New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) to set up a mechanism to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the Abuja Declaration Resolution on fertilizer.
She said the AUC had decided to disseminate the revised monitoring and evaluation tool on the resolution to the various Regional Economic Communities (RECs) in an effort to gather information from the RECs on how they were progressing on the resolutions passed in the Declaration. She said the role of the AUC would be to collaborate with the RECs on what type of input and reporting was expected of them to complete the evaluation and monitoring exercise.
Dr. Edeme further explained that the input received from the RECs would be compiled into a comprehensive report to be tabled to the AU Heads of State and Government.
And Dr. Mwila assured Dr. Edeme of ACTESA’s support and commitment to ensure that the AUC was provided with the relevant information for the M and E exercise.
He informed her that ACTESA had been implementing an input programme under the COMESA Regional Agro-input Programme (COMRAP) and that plans were underway on another initiative meant to jointly procure fertilizer for countries in the COMESA region using the various development corridors linking the countries.
The Abuja Declaration was adopted in 2006 at an AU Africa Fertilizer Summit. African leaders at the end of the Summit declared that fertilizer, from both inorganic and organic sources, was a strategic commodity and resolved that, the African Union member States would accelerate the timely delivery of fertilizers to farmers.