The Director of Research and Innovations at the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), Dr. Irene Annor-Frempong has called on stakeholders and other actors in the agricultural research for development (AR4D) space, to take advantage of advancements in foresight, in the wake of the COVID-19 global pandemic, to push towards the achievement of Africa’s Agenda 2063; achieving food and nutrition security on the continent.
Speaking at the third Africa Foresight Academy webinar hosted by FARA and the CAADP XP4 implementing partners, Dr. Annor-Frempong reiterated the importance of and the need to deploy foresight in the general scheme of agricultural research for development in Africa.
“FARA’s core mandate is about visioning African agricultural research in order to be able to anticipate tomorrow today, and one of the key things we do is around agenda setting, and foresight is really critical to this effort” she stressed.
The Director of Research and Innovations touched on FARA’s collaborative efforts with different partners, particularly with the Global Forum for Agricultural Research (GFAR), in the area of foresight on the continent; indicating that
“we can boast of having a platform called the African Foresight Academy, which is the African component of the global foresight academy”.
Dr. Annor-Frempong also said that Africa was at the brink of many vulnerabilities that impacted on the continent’s food and nutrition security; and therefore, stressed the need to prioritize research, by ensuring that the little investments which are available are targeted to those priorities, not just for today but also for the future. Addressing the issue of overall dearth of capacity across the agriculture value chain on the continent in the area of foresight, Dr. Annor-Frempong said,
“Africa’s own capacity to do that is very low, and so one of the key areas which FARA focuses its foresight work is how we strengthen Africa’s own capacities to use foresight to project and anticipate what we need to do for the future. A case in point is Africa’s own agenda 2063 which gives us our marching orders and within that, FARA’s best work on foresight is pitched”.
The series of webinars under the Africa Foresight Academy is within the context of the CAADP XP4 initiative funded by the European Commission and implemented through the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and anchored by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS), the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA), the Centre for Coordination of Agricultural Research and Development for Southern Africa (CCARDESA) and CORAF.
Making headlines in most media spaces are the heroic deeds of frontline health workers and the tenacity of the health sector in dealing with the novel COVID-19 pandemic. But can they really do this alone? Of course not! At the backstage is their often uncelebrated backbone –the PROCUREMENT SECTOR– providing not only the health sector with the necessary logistics to proactively respond to the ramifications of the virus or mitigate foreseeable implications before they escalate to uncontrollable levels, but to also keep other sectors of the economy running. Just as Covid-19 has affected every activity humanly possible, the procurement bit is not left out.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a threat to procurement transparency as it is to the health of human beings.
Demand patterns have undoubtedly increased as opposed to supply for obvious reasons – shutdowns leading to economic crisis, limited working hours resulting in less productivity and inadequate resources (human inclusive) for optimum production. This is a threat to procurement where adequate goods and services needed to fuel the operations of other sectors of the economy are inadequate or unavailable. These eventually lead to procurement emergencies.
Emergency procurements are bound to happen occasionally due to unforeseen circumstances. The pandemic has however produced more emergencies than usual necessitating frequent emergency procurements resulting in its increment. This reality is as a result of the need to provide the necessary goods and services to sustain businesses and the general needs of the citizenry in spite of the crisis.
With such pressure on procurement, the sector is under the threat of facing issues with transparency in an attempt to respond to emergencies stemming from the pandemic.
Emergency responses stemming from the pandemic have culminated into varied fast tracked procurement processes subject to little or no scrutiny, resulting in high incidences of corruption as workers, contractors or state officials cut corners. In addition, relief packages are also likely to be sold or kept for personal benefits when they are passed through the wrong channels. 1This was the case during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, where procurement breaches were recorded according to an audit on international aid and spending during the outbreak in 2015-2016. 2The International Red Cross estimated the cost of corruption to the Ebola outbreak in Guinea and Sierra Leone to be more than US $6 million. 3A case, whose investigations are still ongoing, is reported where six million nose masks ordered by Germany for its health workers disappeared at a Kenyan airport. Given these past and current evidences, the subject of corruption cannot be overlooked.
Opportunities for competitive bidding is also threatened in the wake of this pandemic. The urgency surrounding procurement deals does not give room for competitive bidding and in cases where there is the opportunity to do so, ‘emergency’ might be used as an excuse to ward off that possibility in the first place. This is a great avenue for contracts to be awarded on the basis of nepotism and favouritism rather than meritocracy in a fair competition.
WAY FORWARD….
The use of emergency as an excuse to skip procurement protocols or avoid due diligence during this pandemic cannot be underestimated. While playing it safe so that bureaucratic process does not implicate emergency actions, all such procurement decisions such as the award of direct contracts and activities should be recorded and publicized with justifications so that the essence of emergency procurements will not be abused. This also protects organisations from suppliers who would want to capitalize on emergency situations to engage in fraudulent activities such as the supply of fake goods and services, outrageous pricing or inaccurate invoices.
Generally, procurement has increased amidst the pandemic be it for emergency reasons or for daily operational purposes. With its high propensity for corruption, it is expedient that all procurements are fully publicized to clear any doubts or suspicions of corruption as well as discourage any intended acts in that regard. This helps build trust in systems and public officials, knowing that resources are not misappropriated.
Ease of access to data on emergency procurement is vital for procurement transparency. Having a fraudulent agenda in mind, people can make emergency procurement data unavailable or inaccessible in order to hide behind that and indulge in corrupt practices. Insisting on open emergency procurement data would help to monitor all emergency procurements together with their justifications, leaving room for no corrupt attempts as well as to easily identify ongoing corrupt activities.
Accountability is a catalyst for nipping corruption in the bud so far as procurement is concerned. When procurement activities are allowed to slide without any queries, auditing or any form of accountability, people are motivated to tow the same line thereby increasing corrupt activities. Publication of sanctions for fraudulent activities connotes its disapproval, serving as a deterrent to other perpetrators and also giving room to call out other violators who have been exempted due to nepotism or favoritism thus promoting equality and fairness.
The success story of most countries amidst the pandemic could be attributed to the collaborative efforts of all relevant stakeholders. Similarly, transparency issues in the procurement sector cannot be handled by organisations alone given the pressure they have to deal with and the many oversights that are bound to happen. Working with civil society organisations, investigative journalists and whistle-blowers will help take care of these blind spots and help defeat corruption amidst the pandemic, bringing criminals to book.
Dr. Akinbamijo was speaking at the African Union Semi-Arid Food Grain Research and Development (AU-SAFGRAD) conference on Thursday, on Innovative financing Mechanism for Agricultural Research and Development in Africa. The conference which was under the theme, “towards achieving the African recommendation of expenditure of 1% GDP on research and development”, drew close to 200 participants across the agricultural research spectrum and was aimed at discussing the strategies for mobilizing alternative financing mechanism to support research activities at country level and to learn from countries like South Africa that have succeeded in engaging businesses and the private sector to finance agricultural research.
While lauding the commitments of governments over the past half-decade, Dr. Akinbamijo noted that a lot more needs to be done if the continent must eventually wean itself from donor-dependency. Justifying this call, he touched on a recent data from the Programme of Accompanying Research and Innovation (PARI) research on funding sources for agricultural research in 12 Africa countries which suggested that 47.6% of the funds is from national governments (including staff salaries and emoluments), 27.0% from donors and 25.36% from research institutes’ internally generated funds.
“A lot of effort has been justifiably dedicated to agriculture in the last 5 decades…but sometimes, a lot is not enough”, he said.
He also elucidated the perennial challenges which bedevil the agriculture and the food system of the continent, touching on the gap between employment and income, resulting in widespread poverty, relatively low productivity, and rapidly rising imports.
Dr. Yemi Akinbamijo also presented a scenario analysis conducted by FARA to explore potential pathways for agriculture-driven transformation using the International Futures (IFs) modelling platform that was informed by the World Economic Forum’s Scenarios of Agricultural Transformation (WEF, 2018). The study summarizes the importance of Agricultural Research and Development (ARD) and the uncertainties which will prove to be very key drivers of agricultural transformation, going into the future. The most uncertain drivers were noted to be Agricultural Productivity & Innovation and Governance for AR4D. These, Dr. Akinbamijo recapped, is where African AR4D institutions should pitch.
In response to these, Dr. Abdou Tenkouano, Executive Director of CORAF, pointed at the need for Africa to look inwards to raise the necessary investment to fund its agricultural research.
“If we have money to import food, we surely have money to produce locally”, he said; adding that each time the countries of the continent import food, those are potential African jobs being exported.
Dr. Ramadjita Tabo, Regional and Research Program Director, International Crops Research for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), West & Central Africa; touching on the impact of local initiatives, mentioned that the strengthening of input shops has led to increase in fertilizer use by 36% on millet, 34% on sorghum, 58% on maize and 73% on cowpea. This he indicated is a great example if the countries are willing to commit at least 1%of GDP to agricultural research.
Making a strong case for an innovative financing mechanism for agricultural research and development in Africa, Dr. Yemi Akinbamijo concluded that, financing AR4D is one of the 8 Megatrends that will determine the future of Africa’s livelihood; and therefore, called for new partnerships, funding mechanisms and frameworks for financing AR4D to support major interventions to achieve STISA, Agenda 2063 & the SDGs.
The Africa Foresight Academy has launched its virtual Food System foresight platform. This is a series of webinars engaging several hundreds of stakeholders and participants from the sub-regional agricultural research organizations implementing the EU-funded CAADP XP4 programme, as well as other organizations and individuals from academia, civil society, governmental and non-governmental agencies.
Moderating the opening session of the maiden edition of the AFA webinar, Dr. Abdulrazak Ibrahim, Capacity Development Officer at FARA, and the Focal Person for the Africa Foresight Academy, situated the foresight webinar series within the context of FARA’s approach to agricultural research interventions in response to COVID-19, indicating the three-prong steps of adapting technologies to fast-track mitigation of food shortages and extending storability, strengthening of food supply systems, trade and labour markets; as well as foresighting vulnerabilities in Africa’s food system.
Hosted by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, the Africa Foresight Academy (AFA) is a network of foresight practitioners at continental, sub-regional and country levels. AFA contributes to the strengthening of capacity for foresight among professionals in African AR4D institutions and private sector through sensitization, developing competencies in conducting foresight and interpretation of foresight results, offering technical assistance to enable regional and national organizations to participate in foresight initiatives and apply results from past /ongoing foresight.
FARA is a continental infrastructure for strengthening the institutional arrangements and the promotion of foresight activities on the continent in partnership with the Global Forum for Agricultural Research (GFAR). FARA’s approach to foresight seeks to foster a proactive attitude for communities faced with changes by unveiling uncertainties and using them as a means for action. The basis of foresight in agriculture in Africa is to facilitate forward-thinking capacity on how innovation and knowledge can best help surmount the diverse challenges facing agriculture, to ensure that agricultural research and innovation are more responsive to future agri-food systems and related development needs.
The AFA series of webinars is targeted at practitioners who want to better understand the impact of COVID-19 on food systems – Africa’s AR4D practitioners & stakeholders including policymakers, scientists, extension agents, researchers, development actors and affiliates of AFA. The weekly participatory webinar is hosted by Experts in Foresight backed by a Dgroup discussion and information and blogs shared on FARA and Foresight4Food websites.
The crisis has hit the supply chain really hard, affecting the flow of agro-commodities. People are too scared to visit the crowded food markets and we have no choice but to accept whatever price we are being offered.
Seyi Ajibare laments the impact of Covid-19 on her thriving agribusiness in Osun state, southwestern Nigeria. Seyi is a young female farmer specializing in the orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP).
Nigeria is known for its high production of root and tuber crops, such as cassava, yam and potato. The nation is one of the leading producers of potato in Sub-Saharan Africa, with an annual production of about 1.3 million tons per annum.
OFSP is one of the improved potato varieties that have been developed by scientists to enable farmers to scale up their yields and income. Since its introduction in 2015, many small- and medium-scale farmers like Seyi have adopted OFSP due to its multiple benefits, including high nutrition and health values, high yield, and growing demand among health-conscious consumers.
Seyi’s adventure into OFSP farming was inspired by some of the success stories shared by Olumide Iyanda, another young farmer in Ogun. Consequently, she started her potato farm on three-hectare farmland, aiming to generate a good return on her investment.
Like other sweet potato varieties, OFSP contributes to improved food security, and can therefore help address hunger and malnutrition. Seyi attributes the wide adoption of OFSP to its ease of planting, and the ability to grow on any type of soils with high output per unit of land. Added benefits, she explains, include high yields despite the low production costs, and early maturity of the crop. Farmers can harvest two crops a year, at around 4–6 tons per hectare. Each planting cycle lasts between three to five months.
However, the disruption caused by measures to contain the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic is limiting business opportunities for OFSP farmers. The crisis has also exposed existing gaps in the potato value chain as a whole, such as a shortage of certified OFSP seeds, and inadequate storage and processing facilities.
Seyi was getting ready to harvest her bumper crop in late March when the Covid-19 lockdown was announced. She was unable to transport most of the harvested potatoes to the large informal markets in Lagos, as planned.
Another market outlet has been disrupted by the closure of schools, she adds. “My potato farm is situated close to a university, so the staff and students patronize us regularly. But since schools have been closed, sales have declined,” she says.
Seyi now sells a bag of OFSP (which often ranges between 5,000–10,000 Naira per 100 kg bag in open markets) for less than half of the normal pre-crisis price. “Most storage facilities in my region have already been filled, leaving me with no option but to accept given prices by the consumers.” Moreover, her farm activities have been crippled by a labor shortage, as local laborers are hesitant to leave their homes amid the repeated messages about keeping social distance.
As a means to maintain her potato farming business, Seyi is hoping to adopt new technologies, and explore value addition through potato processing and preservation, even as she strives to identify other sustainable market opportunities.
In the meantime, OFSP farmers can only hope that interventions from the potato farmers association of Nigeria (POFAN) will be quick and adequately distributed.
This article is part of Covid-19 Food/Future, an initiative aiming to provide a unique and direct insight into the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on national and local food systems. Central to our approach are the experiences of young, urban and peri-urban farmers, street vendors and informal retailers, and low-income consumers. ThinkTank for Sustainability (www.tmg-thinktank.com), or on Twitter @TMG_think. Funding for this initiative is provided by BMZ, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The global pandemic has made it difficult for some African seed companies to produce and import sufficient quantities of quality certified seeds, prompting fears about food security.
A labor shortage, border closures and restrictions on movements have contributed to the challenges that some companies are facing as they struggle to get quality seeds to farmers as the planting season kicks in across the continent.
The situation is raising fears that farm productivity will decline and threaten food security, as seed shortages are predicted for most staple crops.
“COVID-19 came at a time when a lot of the seed companies were preparing to clean their seeds, or preparing to import,” Augusta Nyamadi Clottey, executive secretary of the National Seed Trade Association of Ghana (NASTAG), explained. “The lockdown came in March. And we were supposed to start planting in March. Most of the seeds we were expecting from outside have not come in.”
Ghana imports a lot of its improved vegetable and other seeds, as well as other agricultural inputs, from Europe, Asia and America. These products are now more expensive to bring in because borders have been closed to commercial flights.
“Now, instead of passenger flight, you have to rent a flight,” Clottey said. “And that is adding to the cost. Cost difference is about 15 to 20 percent. Unfortunately, the seed company has to bear all this cost. It means profit margins are decreasing, production cost is increasing.”
Even local seed companies that produce certified seeds for sale to farmers are struggling to get labor to operate smoothly because of COVID-19.
“Most companies who were cleaning their seeds use labor. The final thing is done by human beings. And because of lockdown, and with COVID, they are not getting people to do the cleaning. Even picking seeds in the field is a challenge. So, if we are not careful, quality may be compromised at a point in time,” she said in a webinar session on the impact of COVID-19 on the seed industry that was organized by the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa.
“In Upper East Region, one company uses 150 women to do the final cleaning of the seed,” she added. “Now they are getting only 25 people. Labor is a real challenge. Most of the laborers in the south come from the north and cannot come down south now because of COVID. Most of those in the north come from across the border, Burkina Faso, but are unable to come from across the border now to work because border is closed.”
Several other parts of Africa are facing challenges with producing quality seeds for farmers as a result of the pandemic. Quoting forecasts by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and other sub-regional bodies, CORAF — an association of national agricultural and research organizations of 22 West and Central African countries — predicts COVID will cause a shortfall of certified seeds of various staple crops for the 2020 cropping season across the sub-region. Crops to be affected include maize, sorghum, millet, cowpea and groundnuts.
Cowpea, for example, is a popular food high in protein which is consumed by about 200 million people in Africa. Demand for certified cowpea seeds for the 2020 crop season in Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Togo, Côte d’Ivoire, Chad, Cape Verde and Gambia is projected at 150,000 metric tons. But CORAF projects only 2,800 metric tons of certified cowpea seeds will be available for the 2020 cropping season in these countries because of COVID-19. There is also shortage in certified groundnut seeds. The Sahel Region of West Africa needs 250,000 metric tons of certified groundnut seeds for the 2020 crop season. But only 5,000 metric tons are projected to be available.
In 12 West African countries, including Benin, Guinea, Gambia, Senegal and Cape Verde, less than 10,000 metric tons of certified sorghum and millet seeds will be available in the 2020 cropping season, falling far short of a projected demand of 100,000 metric tons, according to CORAF. And although these countries will need 200,000 metric tons of certified maize seeds, only 70,000 metric tons will be available during the current cropping season.
“Unless swift action is taken to facilitate producers’ access to seeds and other inputs, the disruptions caused by COVID-19 will inevitably lead to a decrease in agricultural production due to the unavailability of required quality seeds to plant at the right time.” CORAF cautions. “Concerted effort should be made to ensure the availability and access to certified seeds of major staple food crops in the ECOWAS and Sahel region to avert the looming consequences of the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on agricultural production.”
Certified seeds are high quality seeds produced under strict standards by licensed seed firms to ensure they have high germination and productivity rates. The use of low-quality seeds is known to be responsible for low productivity on farms across Africa. More than 70 percent of farmers on the continent still do not have access to improved, quality seeds. In the absence of high-quality seeds because of COVID-19, productivity on farms is likely to hit rock bottom and make it more difficult for farmers to feed themselves and their families.
“It is a universal truism that quality seeds exert profound influence on agricultural productivity, enhancing yield sometimes by as much as 20 to 25 percent, or even more, if deployed in the context of an improved input package,” Josiah Wobil, chairman of Ghana’s National Seed Council, observed. “We had been making very good progress until this year. The introduction of the pandemic into West Africa has changed the ball game and really disturbed smooth sailing into large scale seed production.”
The African Seed Trade Association, the continental mother association of seed sector actors, has called for concerted efforts to ensure quality and improved seeds reach farmers in a timely manner, despite the pandemic.
“The movement of seed within country and across borders should not be affected, considering that coronaviruses have poor survivability on surfaces, and it is highly improbable that coronaviruses can survive international transport,” Justin Rakotoarisaona, secretary general of the association, said in a statement copied to Alliance for Science. “This is especially true for shipments of seed handled by professional seed companies that already respect strict sanitary, phytosanitary and hygienic handling protocol.
“Closing borders or even slowing down the cross-border seed movement creates a significant problem in the seed supply chain domestically, regionally and globally,” Rakotoarisaona continued. “In a number of regions, it is now the planting season and timely delivery of seed and other agricultural inputs is crucial to ensure farmers plant on time in order to ensure food security, especially after the health crisis.”
Eric Danquah, professor and founding director of the West Africa Center for Crop Improvement at the University of Ghana, said COVID-19 has exposed weaknesses in the agricultural supply chain systems across the continent that need to be addressed immediately.
“It is troubling that commitment to the sector by governments has been waning, even as countries face some of the greatest threats in history, including population growth and the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disrupted food supply chains on an unprecedented scale,” he said. “Obviously, a business as usual approach will worsen the already troubling food and nutrition security situation. Whether the food system, especially in West Africa, emerges stronger or more fragile will depend on what is urgently done to create self-reliant food systems.”
Government officials on the continent are telling a different story and offering assurances that there is no need to panic.
“We have met with seed companies. They have assured us a lot of seeds are in country. It’s only the vegetables that we now have a bit of it coming in. But that is not a problem…,” Dr. Solomon Gyan Ansah, deputy director of agriculture at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Ghana, said.
“In fact, this pandemic has really prompted government [to recognize] that at any point in time, we should have some seeds that are secured to be used in times of disaster. And I believe government will put measures in place to make sure that we have seeds at all times to be used,” he added.
