Written answers

Tuesday, 6 July 2010

Department of Foreign Affairs

Overseas Development Aid

10:00 am

Photo of Michael D HigginsMichael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)
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Question 94: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the support that he and the EU are giving, or propose to give, to enable African countries achieve the aims of the Maputo declaration on agricultural production as a proportion of GDP. [29634/10]

Photo of Micheál MartinMicheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Ireland supports African countries' efforts to achieve the aims of the Maputo Declaration in a variety of ways. We are directly engaged in the agricultural sector in a number of countries particularly Malawi and Tanzania. Ireland's programmes of General Budget Support are also helping our partner countries meet the Maputo Declaration target. We also support the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme, or CAADP.

CAADP is an African owned regional framework for guiding investment in the agricultural sector that was endorsed by the member states of the African Union in the Maputo Declaration of 2003. CAADP is based on the pursuit of six percent average annual growth in the agricultural sector at national level as well as the Maputo Declaration's explicit target of an allocation of ten percent of national budgets to agriculture. Agricultural spending by African governments is now increasing. To date at least eight countries have met the ten percent target while another sixteen countries reached expenditure shares of five to ten percent. There is an increasing body of evidence suggesting that the agricultural sectors of countries signed up to the CAADP agenda are already demonstrating improved growth.

Ireland supports the CAADP process on a number of levels. Last year we provided €1.5m through the appropriate World Bank Multi Donor Trust Fund which was established to support the development of the CAADP process. Eighteen African countries have now signed up to the framework and aligned their agricultural policies. This year Irish Aid has contributed €500,000 to the new Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme of the World Bank which is managing support for the national investment plans developed through CAADP. In addition we are focusing our support at country level to ensure the quality of these investment plans, particularly in Malawi and Tanzania, two countries where we are coordinating all donors in the agriculture sector. The €23m of Irish Aid funding channelled through the European Development Fund in 2010 is also a significant and relevant contribution to the agricultural work of our partner governments. The European Commission is a major donor to the agricultural sector in general and also to CAADP. In relation to the CAADP process it has provided €5m over the last three years.

The Commission will continue to provide significant levels of funding to the development of the agriculture sector in Africa in various ways that are aligned with CAADP priorities. We understand that the overall level of assistance from the Commission for CAADP and related agriculture sector development programmes is likely to remain above €400m per annum up to 2013.

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