At the L’Aquila G8 Summit in 2009, African leaders called upon the international community to coordinate support for agriculture on the continent through the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) as the leading African-owned initiative. They also called upon donors to do this in a manner embodying principles of aid effectiveness such as coordination, harmonisation, alignment and respect for country leadership.
At HQ level, this was to be achieved by donor agencies through CAADP’s Development Partners Task Team, which would provide a single point of contact for the AUC, NPCA and other African partners to communicate with the international community, and for donors to communicate in a consistent way with their field offices regarding how to advance support for CAADP.
Wasafiri was hired by 4 successive chairs of the task team to coordinate and support its activities, and over the course of 3 years, Wasafiri consultants provided much-valued continuity in managing the engagement of development partners with CAADP. Wasafiri was additionally charged with achieving the following key priorities for multi-stakeholder agreement in the context of CAADP:
- Facilitating the Addis Consensus on Guidelines for Donor Support to CAADP at a country-level;Producing the Guidelines for Non-State Actor participation in CAADP;
- Developing a CAADP Mutual Accountability Framework; and
- Catalysing Grow Africa as the CAADP vehicle for generating private-sector investment.
The on-going alignment and commitment of donors has been key to enabling CAADP’s unprecedented progress in driving agricultural transformation on the continent, with CAADP held up as an international example of best practice for improved donor coordination. With Wasafiri’s support, the CAADP Development Partners Task Team has been the linchpin of working relationships between donors and African partners in advancing this historic progress.
