The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) was endorsed at the African Union Heads of State Summit as a New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) program in July 2003 and focuses on improving and promoting agriculture across Africa. The overall goal of CAADP is to “Help African countries reach a higher path of economic growth through agriculture-led development, which eliminates hunger, reduces poverty and food insecurity, and enables expansion of exports.” CAADP aims to eliminate hunger and reduce poverty through agriculture.
CAADP is a growth-oriented agricultural development agenda, aims at increasing agriculture growth rates to six percent per year to create the wealth needed for rural communities and households in Africa to prosper.
To achieve this goal, CAADP focuses its interventions in four key pillars to achieve measurable outcomes:
Pillar 1: Extending the area under sustainable land management and reliable water control systems;
Pillar 2: Improving rural infrastructure and trade-related capacities for market access;
Pillar 3: Increasing food supply, reducing hunger, and improving responses to food emergency crises; and
Pillar 4: Improving agriculture research, technology dissemination and adoption.
Through CAADP, African leaders hope to see:
Dynamic agricultural markets within and between countries and regions in Africa;
Farmers being active in the market economy and the continent becoming a net exporter of agricultural products;
A more equitable distribution of wealth for rural populations;
Africa as a strategic player in agricultural science and technology; and
Environmentally sound agricultural production and a culture of sustainable management of natural resources in Africa.
What is happening in the programme? The government of Uganda should incorporate the CAADP objectives into agricultural and rural development strategies. As part of the implementation process Uganda is subjected to an independent review process to ensure the goals of the CAADP and the needs of the country are both met.
Crosscutting issues common across the four pillars targeted for interventions include capacity strengthening for agribusiness; academic and professional training; and improving access to information for agricultural strategy formulation.