By FRED OLUOCH

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Ibrahim A. Mayaki, the chief executive of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development and former prime minister of Niger, spoke with Fred Oluoch on progress and challenges in the past 18 years.

Has Nepad’s agenda to eradicate poverty and promote sustainable economic growth in Africa succeeded?

Nepad was adopted in 2002 as the pan-African strategic framework for the socio-economic development of Africa. It was envisaged as the primary mechanism to co-ordinate the pace and impact of Africa’s development in the 21st century, including poverty eradication, economic integration and Africa’s sustainable growth and development.

The agency has adopted programmes of poverty-eradication through agricultural industrialisation and environmental sustainability. The agricultural sector has been the major focus because of its potential in elevating the standard of living of the average African.

At least 40 AU member states have so far committed to the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme principles to prioritise agriculture as the mainstay of their development, with a focus on enhancing production and productivity and support to small-scale farmers to graduate into commercial farmers. These include; fisheries, agribusiness, agriculture risk management, climate change, and food and nutrition security into their National Agriculture Investment Plans.

Some value chain platforms have been established such as the rice industry stakeholder’s platform in Côte d’Ivoire, the cassava industry sector platform in Ghana and Nigeria, the pineapple industry platform in Benin, the potato sector platform in Kenya, the horticulture sector platform in Rwanda, and the maize sector platform in Malawi.

What are some of the tangible results that Nepad can talk about?

Agriculture remains the primary input for Africa’s industrial and manufacturing sector, thereby improving the livelihood of farmers. Some 26 member states have implemented the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative geared towards restoring 125 million hectares to reduce land degradation and desertification, create sustainable jobs, and improve food security and build resilient among pastoralist groups.

There is also good progress in embracing renewable energy technologies, especially mini-grid solutions to accelerate universal energy access for purposes of increasing productive capacity, enhancing environmental resilience. Energy audits for heavy industries were conducted in Rwanda and Tanzania, while in Uganda and Burundi have identified and adopted energy-efficient and renewable energy projects.

What do say you about the Blue Economy that has been identified as having the potential of promoting economic growth and reducing poverty?

The world and Africa’s aquatic ecosystem is under stress from a range of factors including over-exploitation, pollution, declining biodiversity, expansion of invasive species, climate change and ocean acidification. It, therefore, becomes critical for Africa as a continent to sustainably develop its blue economy.

The development of sustainable blue economies for African countries will also maximise the benefits and services from aquatic environments; develop national equity by developing inclusive growth and creating decent employment for all and assist countries to participate in the international governance of maritime environments.

The intra-regional fish trade in Africa has been boosted through strengthened regional certification, standards and regulations in fisheries.

Nepad also had the objective to integrate Africa into the world economy. What is the progress?

The implementation of Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa has put emphasis on key trans-boundary infrastructure projects that interconnect and integrate Africa. As a result, 16,066 km of roads and 4,077 km of railway lines have been added to Africa’s transport infrastructure network. Examples of added infrastructure include; the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia-Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor and the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor. In addition, 3,506 km of electricity transmission lines have been added to the power grids, while 17 countries were connected through regional fibre-optic cables.

Following the launch of the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM), the AUDA-Nepad in collaboration with partners such as AfDB has embarked on efforts to reduce air travel fares and costs in Africa by 50 percent. To-date, 28 AU member States have committed to implementing SAATM.

What is Nepad doing to accelerate the empowerment of women?

Gender equality and women’s empowerment are central to sustainable development and AUDA-Nepad ensures that its work is fully aligned to AU policies and frameworks that promote gender equality and women empowerment. We have identified and addressed gender gaps in areas such as: women political participation; gender-based violence and prevention and support to victims: training of security forces and establishment of early warning system for the prevention of gender-based violence and litigation and support to victims

A priority of Agenda 2063 is the empowerment of rural women, thus AUDA-Nepad through its gender programmed have offered skills for rural women in 27 countries in agricultural productivity and agro-processing.

A total of 175 co-operatives have been created to enable 27 million women to have access to extension services, technology and financing.

About 530,000 women and youth have been economically empowered by AUDA-Nepad through vocational education training and business opportunities. As a result, a total of 1.2 million women have had direct positive impact of our support in areas such as business development, microfinance, agriculture, nutrition and ICT in 38 African countries.

What are some of the challenges and what is Nepad doing about them?

The biggest is the growing rate of youth unemployment posing a challenge for inclusive growth and development. Accordingly, four countries, Benin, Cameroon, Malawi and Niger received support to develop National Action Plans for rural youth employment.

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BIO
Education: PhD in Administrative Sciences from the University of Paris, France; Masters degree from the National School of Public Administration, Quebec, Canada

Employment: January 2009 to date: CEO the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) Agency

2004: Executive director of the platform in support of Rural Development in West and Central Africa, the Rural Hub, based in Dakar, Senegal.

2000: Set up Analysis Centre for Public Policy in Senegal

1997 to 2000: Prime Minister of Niger

1996 to 1997: Minister in charge of African Integration and Cooperation and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Niger