By Dr Timothy Njagi
On January 12, 2025, the African Union (AU) member states adopted the Kampala Declaration to enhance the Malabo Declaration on Agricultural Growth, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Strategy, set for 2026-2035 during the Extraordinary Summit in Kampala, Uganda.
The strategy aims to boost economic growth, food security, and livelihoods while tackling climate change issues and fostering smallholder farmers’ empowerment and aligns with the African Union’s Agenda 2063, promoting food security, agricultural transformation, and reduced food imports.
As the next phase of implementing CAADP commences, taking stock of the accomplishments of the Malabo commitments made for 2014-2025 is crucial. The Malabo commitments contained seven commitments implemented through the CAADP strategy. Overall, Kenya attained a score of 6.28 against the benchmark score of 9.29.
The overall progress was rated as progressing well but was not on track to reach the target for the Malabo commitments. Despite not being on track, Kenya was one of the 12 countries that steadily improved their performance in the current phase of CAADP implementation. Evaluating how the country performed in each of the seven commitments, lessons are drawn to inform this next phase of implementing CAADP. For each commitment, a grade of hit or miss is allocated depending on whether the country attained the benchmark target or missed the target using the data reported in the final biennial review report published in 2024.
The country did well on two commitments and lagged on five. Overall, the country can make improvements and enhance performance in the next phase of CAADP implementation. The performance for each commitment is explained below. Source: 4th CAADP BR Report, 2024 Commitment
1: Commitment to the CAADP process (Miss)
Although this commitment is categorised as a miss, Kenya made progress in specific areas.
The country has implemented CAADP processes coordinated by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development. However, the country did not perform well on the other indicators for this commitment, that is, cooperation, partnerships and alliance, and policy and institutional review. The performance was influenced by changes in the governance structure at the onset of this phase of CAADP implementation.
However, institutionalisation has been slower than anticipated. The country can improve its performance by enhancing coordination with county governments, cascading sector coordination, monitoring and evaluation frameworks and building the capacity of the devolved system to undertake these functions.
Commitment 2: Investment finance in Agriculture (Miss)
The country missed the target of enhancing investment finance in the sector. Public spending for the sector remained relatively constant even as the total expenditure grew, meaning the share of expenditures invested in the sector shrank. Furthermore, private sector investments were low.
The indicator for this commitment where the country performed well was access to financial services, which has been made possible due to mobile phone penetration and service offering through mobile phones.
The country can improve investments in the sector by attracting private sector investments. This can be accomplished by utilising public resources to increase supply of agricultural public goods such as research, extension, and agricultural infrastructure such as irrigation and storage infrastructure. Furthermore, the government should pursue policy coherence and divest from private sector-oriented functions to incentivise private investments.
Commitment 3: Ending hunger (Miss)
Under this commitment, the country was on track with the indicator of sanitary and phytosanitary measures. It made considerable improvements in social protection due to the various cash transfer programmes targeting the vulnerable — orphans and vulnerable children, communities affected by adverse weather and other shocks and old persons.
However, the country was not on track for indicators of access to agriculture inputs and technologies, agricultural productivity, post-harvest losses and food security and nutrition. The country can improve this commitment by pursuing Inclusive Agricultural Transformation (IAT). This would involve prioritising value chains that attract investments in different regions, benefiting from comparative advantages in these regions’ ecological and socio-economic factors to attract private investments and stimulate markets.
The inclusive nature of IAT would also ensure gains in jobs, value-added, and poverty reduction for different population categories, such as women and youth. Moreover, the country needs to pay attention to food and nutrition security, which is directly affected by production shocks. The country can also enhance the supply of quality agriculture inputs to meet the total requirements by incentivising private investments in the sector.
Commitment 4: Eradicating poverty through agriculture (Hit)
The performance for this commitment is categorised as a hit, although it was scored as progressive well during the biennial review. The commitment had four indicators, of which the country attained the benchmark score for the indicators. These indicators were inclusive public private partnerships (PPPs) for commodity value chains, youth jobs in agriculture, and women’s participation in agribusiness. The country was not on track for the indicator of Agricultural Gross Domestic Product (Ag GDP) growth and poverty reduction. Ag GDP growth was adversely affected by shocks such as droughts in 2017 and 2022, the COVID pandemic, and supply chain shocks such as fertiliser price shock in 2022 and animal feed price shock from 2021.
The country must build the resilience of agricultural producers, reduce their vulnerability to shocks, and improve the agricultural value added per arable land and per worker to make progress on this indicator. Commitment
5: Intra-African trade in agricultural commodities and services (Miss)
The country was not on track for the indicators of intra-African trade on agricultural commodities or intra-African trade policies and institutional conditions. This indicator measures progress in implementing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA). Besides the AfCTA, implementing regional trade policies such as EAC and COMESA enhances the performance of this indicator. The country needs to improve data collection to track the implementation of trade in agriculture commodities, especially with regional neighbours where a lot of informal cross-border trade happens but remains unreported.
Commitment 6: Resilience to climate variability (Miss)
The country was not on track with this commitment although it made progress on the indicator on investments in resilience building. The country has suffered significant weather events during the CAADP implementation period, with the drought in 2017 and 2022, flooding in 2014, 2018 and 2024, and weatherrelated pest outbreaks in 2020. These shocks exposed the country’s vulnerability to weather shocks and underlined the need to prioritise building the resilience of agricultural producers. Building resilience for smallholders has been prioritised in the sector strategy, the Agriculture Sector Transformation and Growth Strategy 2019-2029, and the country needs to track the progress made towards achieving this target. Commitment
7: Mutual accountability for action and results (Hit)
The country met the benchmark target set for this commitment, making progress on capacity building for evidence-based planning, implementation and M&E, disseminating BR report findings and utilising the results. However, the country could improve peer review and accountability and institutionalise the BR process at the county level. It made progress in generating and utilising the agricultural statistical database.
However, peer review mechanisms such as the Joint Sector Reviews have seldom been undertaken. The reviews are essential for reflecting on progress, challenges, and lessons during implementation and taking corrective action to improve results. There is also a need to ensure that these mechanisms are actively implemented at the devolved level in line with the structure of the sector. In summary, the country made notable progress in implementing the CAADP strategy.
However, the country will not meet the targets set under the Malabo commitments. Learning from this phase of implementation is vital to build momentum for the next phase of CAADP implementation. The recommendations provided here aim to ensure that the country builds on this progress and enhances performance in the forthcoming phase of CAADP implementation