Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy

S. Hendriks, N. Mabuza, K. Hendriks, Nic JJ Olivier, M. Makhura, E. Mkandawire, N. Mkhwanazi, L. Mkusa, and N. Vilakazi, 2018. An Evaluation of the Level of Integration and Alignment of the Malabo Commitments, Africa's Agenda 2063 and the SDGs in 10 National Agriculture and Food Security Investment Plans, Food Security Investment Plans, Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy Research Paper 108. East Lansing: Michigan State University

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have introduced greater integration of development objectives across traditional sectors. This integration is also reflected in Africa’s Agenda 2063 vision for development. Africa’s agricultural and food security initiatives through the 2003 Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) seeks to achieve the goals of Agenda 2063 and contribute to the achievement of the SGDs. This commitment is set out in the 2014 Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods. The African Union recently (2017) established a Biennial Review (BR) mechanism to support the implementation of the Malabo Declaration and hold countries accountable for making progress on the commitments. Currently, many African countries are revising their first five-year CAADP implementation plans and drafting their second five-year National Agriculture and Food Security Investment Plans (or NAIP IIs) in line with the Malabo commitments.

This paper set out to assess ten NAIP IIs from the perspective of the indicator sets contained in the NAIPs against the BR, the First 10-year Implementation Plan of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 (2014 to 2023) and the SDG’s. The research was conducted in three steps.

i. An assessment of the NAIP monitoring and evaluation frameworks of ten available NAIPs to determine the alignment between:

a. Country NAIPs and the BR indicators,
b. Country NAIPs and Agenda 2063’s First 10-year Implementation Plan (2014-2023) indicators,
c. Country NAIPs and the SDG indicators with a specific focus on food security and nutrition elements,

ii. The identification of novel and innovative practices and indicators and establish where there are gaps that could be improved; and

iii. Documenting the insights gained from the analysis and drafting of suggestions to improve the design of monitoring and evaluation frameworks in relation to food security and nutrition components of development programmes across the world.

We find that the NAIP monitoring and evaluation frameworks were generally compliant with the SDG indicators that were directly related to agriculture and food security. However, they do not exploit the opportunities to align in the areas of the SDGs that address some of the core aspirations of the CAADP agenda – seeking to advance agricultural transformation to reduce poverty, inequality and unemployment. Furthermore, a misalignment exists between the monitoring and evaluation frameworks of the NAIPs, the indicators of the BR and the first ten-year implementation plans for Agenda 2063. At a minimum, alignment of the NAIP indicators with the BR could provide more comprehensive coverage of indicators that generally overlap with both Agenda 2030 and the First 10-year Implementation Plan (2014 – 2023) of Agenda 2063. However, the BR could be strengthened from closer alignment with the SGDs and in some areas, adopting the broader specifications in the SDGs could lend more direction to the BR indicators and the CAADP process in general. For example, the SDGs include monitoring of the incomes of smallholders and the reduction in the rate of unemployment among vulnerable groups (including youth). In addition, a significant number of indicators were included in the NAIPs that were not in the BR and could be
considered in improving the BR indicator set.

Some countries adopted a more progressive approach to designing their monitoring and evaluation frameworks, resulting in a higher proportion of indicators aligned with the three indicator sets. The lack of appreciation of the full scope of food security (beyond production) led to an imbalanced focus on production by some countries. Malawi and Liberia responded well to interventions by the team and improved their indicator set.

As is evident from this analysis, country-level planning does not seem to take into account the international and African transversal sectoral frameworks in the drafting of policies, legislation, strategies and action plans. An insufficient number of indicators focussed on the impact indicators of the CAADP] Results Framework, namely wealth creation; food security and nutrition; economic opportunities, poverty alleviation and shared prosperity; and resilience and sustainability. Although the second highest performance area coverage was in resilience to climate change, the focus in the BR on climate change
meant the NAIPs neglected other elements of resilience related to food security, peace and migration. There is room for improvement in the inclusion of more food security and related indicators, shifting the focus to the inclusion of impact indicators.

We recommend a review of the drafting process and the composition of the drafting team to ensure that NAIP II monitoring and evaluation frameworks include a comprehensive, integrated indicator set that is aligned with the BR, Agenda 2063’s First 10-year Implementation Plan (2014 – 2023) and the SDGs. Clearer guidance, supported by oversight and the development of enhanced guidance tools and regular updates (such as the NAIP toolkit) are essential to support country teams in their efforts, especially in view of the rapidly changing circumstances and events such as the passing of new agreements that affect the policy context (such as the recently signed African Free Trade Agreement). The findings of the analysis raise the need for considerably more training on the BR, the design of the NAIP monitoring and evaluation and the alignment of these with Agenda 2063 and the SGDs to ensure alignment and compliance, as well as improve the quality of reporting across the transversal development space.

Mid-term reviews of the NAIPs and their monitoring and evaluation frameworks could provide opportunities for updating and strengthening the frameworks and aligning these more closely with the First 10-year Implementation Plan (2014 – 2023) of Agenda 2063 and the SDGs. Although we have not analysed the alignment of the NAIP monitoring and evaluation frameworks with the individual countries’ long-term national development plans and medium-term (five years) Growth and Development Strategies (GDSs; sometimes referred to as Medium Term Strategic Frameworks (MTSFs), this is an area for further analysis and assessment.