Cover_Rebuilding West Africas Food Potential

XLIV Rebuilding West Africa’s food potential

value chains should fuel an agro-industry development with positive spillover effects on other locally

important value chains that contribute to food supply or has a significant export growth potential and

contributing to increased farmers’ incomes (examples: cashew nut, sesame, shea butter etc).

4.2 Supporting implementation of the National Agricultural Investment Programs

(NAIPs): A triple criteria assessment for an integrated investment strategy

To facilitate implementation of the NAIPs, priority actions and targeted interventions targeting the

priority value chains should be formulated and developed on the basis of detailed assessment covering

three primary criteria, namely:

(i) Need: Actions and interventions requiring investments should be prioritized based on the value

chain specific development needs as determined by agronomy, agro-ecological conditions, scope

for productivity increase, and critical bottlenecks identified along the various value chain stages,

including post-harvest, processing and marketing. Such a need assessment – with input from all the

key market agents- should identify not only the critical areas for interventions, but also the optimal

sequencing for maximum impact

(ii) Capacity: This criterion relates to evaluating available capacity, whether human (technical, including

research and extension, managerial including planning and monitoring), financial (from all possible

funding sources) or infrastructural (storage, laboratories for quality testing, communication

systems, roads and transportation). The capacity assessment should also be closely linked to the

need assessment outcomes and be formulated at the value chain level, when necessary

(iii) Impact: The impact assessment criterion evaluates the scope for market expansion (such as

irrigation potential, readily achievable yield improvements, degree of trade substitution, etc.),

potential income generation and employment addition.

These assessments should be multi-stakeholder led and guided by a technical team with the required

expertise to guide weighting options and to tackle measurement issues and option tradeoffs.

Beyond the value chain-specific options and identified interventions, an integrated investment strategy

must also include a number of critical cross cutting needs that must be established or supported.

These crosscutting actions may vary across countries depending on the development stage and the

institutional environment of the country, and can include, among others:

(i) Creation of educational and training institutes to provide the necessary professional and technical

training to farmer leaders, technical agents and commodity experts in production technique,

processing, marketing, finance etc.;

(ii) Agencies or institutions dedicated to capacity development for producer organizations and their

leaders including women;

(iii) National centers for value chain risk assessments, risk management, and financial education;

(iv) Observatories to monitor and develop trade information rules and coordination, among others.

4.3 Coordinating the strategy implementation

The implementation of the NAIP and its eventual success will depend largely on the degree of

participation of the four key market agencies (public, agribusiness, finance, producers) and the

importance given to participatory governance and to effective coordination. The success of inclusive

governance in the process of NAIP implementation requires that full account is given to the goals and

strategies and needs of each of the four key market agencies from which synergies, complementarities