In July 2003, African leaders gathered in Maputo and made an important collective commitment. Agriculture would no longer be treated as a neglected sector of African development. Under the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme, commonly known as CAADP, governments pledged to allocate at least 10 per cent of national budgetary resources to agriculture and rural development. They also embraced the ambition of achieving sustained annual agricultural growth. The diagnosis was clear. Africa possessed enormous agricultural potential, yet millions of Africans remained undernourished. The continent was increasingly dependent on imported food. Agricultural development was constrained by inadequate financing, poor water management, weak rural infrastructure and insufficient investment in research and technology. Most importantly, African leaders recognised that revitalising agriculture was, above all, Africa’s own responsibility. Twenty-three years later, enough time has passed for an objective assessment: What has actually changed? The answer is neither complete failure nor convincing success. Agricultural production has expanded. Agriculture has returned to the centre of continental policy. Governments have prepared national strategies and agricultural investment plans. Regional institutions have become more involved. Private investment, improved seeds, fertilisers, irrigation, agricultural research and digital services have spread across many countries. CAADP itself deserves recognition. It created something that Africa previously lacked: a continental framework through which governments could establish common objectives, measure progress, compare performance and hold themselves accountable. These are meaningful achievements. But the ultimate purpose of agricultural policy is not to produce declarations, strategies, conferences or favourable growth statistics. It is to feed people, create viable livelihoods, build productive economies and make societies more resilient. Measured against those objectives, Africa’s record remains deeply troubling. The paradox of growth and hunger The most uncomfortable evidence comes from the food-security figures. According to the latest estimates of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, hunger affected approximately 309 million Africans in 2025—20 per cent of the continent’s population. More than half of Africa’s population was moderately or severely food insecure. Africa now has more hungry people than any other region of the world. This presents a fundamental contradiction: How can a continent whose agricultural sector has expanded substantially remain the region where hunger is most severe? Population growth is part of the explanation, but it cannot become a permanent excuse for inadequate performance. Africa’s demographic expansion was foreseeable and should have been incorporated into agricultural planning decades ago. The deeper problem is that increased production is not the same as transformation of a food system. A functioning food system begins with the farmer, but it does not end at the farm. It includes irrigation, seeds, fertilisers, veterinary services, research, credit, insurance, storage, electricity, roads, transport, processing, packaging, markets, food-safety regulation, regional trade and, ultimately, the purchasing power of consumers. If production rises while large quantities of food are lost after harvest, farmers remain poor and consumers remain vulnerable. If farmers produce but cannot reach markets, increased output changes little. If African commodities leave the continent unprocessed and return as expensive finished products, the greater share of the value is created elsewhere. If food is available in markets but millions of people cannot afford a safe and nutritious diet, the food system is still failing. Africa’s implementation deficit Africa does not suffer from a shortage of agricultural declarations. Maputo was followed in 2014 by the Malabo Declaration, which renewed and expanded the continent’s agricultural commitments. Malabo has now been succeeded by the Kampala CAADP Declaration and the Strategy and Action Plan for 2026–2035. Each generation of commitments has become more elaborate. The results have not kept pace with the language. The African Union’s fourth CAADP Biennial Review provided a sobering assessment. Forty-nine member states submitted reports. Nineteen were considered to be progressing relatively well, while 30 were not on track. More fundamentally, no African country was on course to meet all seven Malabo commitments by the 2025 deadline. African Union These are not conclusions imposed on Africa by outsiders. They come from Africa’s own accountability mechanisms and must therefore be confronted seriously. The central weakness of African agricultural policy has not been the absence of ideas. It has been the persistent gap between commitment and execution. We have sometimes behaved as though adopting a declaration were itself an achievement. It is not. A declaration is a promise. The achievement must be measured in irrigated fields, productive farms, functioning markets, viable agro-industries and well-nourished citizens. What happened to the 10 per cent? The Maputo undertaking was straightforward: governments agreed to allocate at least 10 per cent of their national budgets to agriculture and rural development within five years. Twenty-three years later, the question is no longer whether the commitment was admirable. It is whether it was consistently implemented, whether the money was effectively spent and what measurable transformation it produced. Public expenditure is not the whole answer. Agriculture also requires private investment, functioning financial institutions and commercially sustainable farming. But public investment remains indispensable in areas where individual farmers cannot reasonably carry the burden: irrigation, feeder roads, agricultural research, disease surveillance, extension services, electricity, storage and market infrastructure. Governments cannot declare agriculture a strategic priority while financing it as a secondary activity. Budgets reveal priorities more accurately than speeches. My own experience reinforced this lesson. After retiring from public service, I took up farming with enthusiasm. I did reasonably well, but eventually stopped as the costs became increasingly difficult to sustain. That experience gave me a renewed appreciation of what farmers confront: expensive inputs, limited affordable financing, market uncertainty and inadequate institutional support. If these pressures can discourage a farmer who entered the sector by choice and with some resources, one should imagine what they mean for millions whose survival depends entirely on agriculture. African governments must stop romanticising farming while leaving farmers to carry systemic risks alone. Africa must produce—and process Africa also continues to export too many raw agricultural commodities while importing too many processed products. We produce cocoa but import chocolate. We export coffee beans while much of the processing, branding and retail profit is captured elsewhere. We produce livestock but import processed dairy and meat products. We grow fruit while importing juice and other packaged foods. This is not merely an agricultural problem. It is an industrialisation problem. The future of African agriculture cannot be separated from agro-industry. African farmers need African factories. Production, storage, cold chains, processing, packaging, certification, logistics and retail must become parts of integrated African value chains. Agriculture must do more than feed people. It must create industries, skilled employment, exports, technology and capital. This is particularly important for Africa’s young population. Governments cannot persuade young Africans to enter agriculture while continuing to present it as subsistence farming undertaken with rudimentary tools and little prospect of prosperity. Modern agriculture must be technologically sophisticated, financially viable and commercially attractive. It must offer a future, not merely survival. Fifty-four markets cannot build one food system Africa must also confront the fragmentation of its agricultural markets. A food surplus in one African country should help address a shortage in another before governments automatically turn to distant suppliers. Yet moving agricultural products across African borders remains unnecessarily expensive and complicated. Poor transport infrastructure, border delays, incompatible standards, non-tariff barriers, unpredictable restrictions and administrative inefficiency continue to obstruct intra-African food trade. This is where the African Continental Free Trade Area must become more than a legal agreement or diplomatic slogan. Food should be one of the clearest tests of whether African economic integration is working. The fourth CAADP Biennial Review found that the continent was not on track to fulfil the Malabo commitment to expand intra-African trade in agricultural commodities and services. That should concern every African government. Africa cannot credibly speak of continental food security while maintaining fragmented national food markets. Drought does not respect national frontiers. Regional food-surplus strategies should not be imprisoned by them. United, Africa can create a viable continental food market. Divided, its countries will continue importing from distant producers what neighbouring African farmers may already be able to supply. From food security to food sovereignty Food security and food sovereignty are related, but they are not identical. A country can theoretically maintain food security by importing what it needs from international markets. But what happens when wars disrupt shipping routes, currencies depreciate, exporting countries impose restrictions, fertiliser prices rise sharply or global supply chains fail? The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent international disruptions exposed these vulnerabilities. Food sovereignty does not mean that every African country must produce everything it consumes. That would be impractical and economically inefficient. It means that Africa collectively must possess sufficient productive, technological, financial, processing and trading capacity to exercise meaningful control over something as fundamental as feeding its people. No continent can claim genuine strategic autonomy while remaining excessively dependent on external systems for its essential food requirements. External partnerships will remain useful, but they should reinforce African capacity rather than perpetuate dependency. Africa should learn internationally where necessary, while investing much more deliberately in its own universities, research institutions, seed systems, technologies and agricultural enterprises. Climate change has altered the equation Incremental progress will no longer be enough. African agriculture remains particularly exposed to climate variability. Droughts, floods, soil degradation, changing rainfall patterns and extreme temperatures increasingly threaten farmers whose production still depends heavily on rain. The agricultural transformation of the next 20 years cannot simply reproduce the farming systems of the previous 20. Water management must become a strategic priority. Irrigation, rainwater harvesting, climate-resilient crops, reliable meteorological information, agricultural insurance and sustainable soil management will increasingly determine whether African food systems remain viable. Climate resilience is no longer an environmental addition to agricultural policy. It is agricultural policy. Rwanda’s example—and unfinished work There are positive African experiences from which the continent can learn. Rwanda achieved the highest overall score in the African Union’s fourth CAADP Biennial Review, followed by Morocco and Egypt. Rwanda had also led earlier review cycles. This does not mean that Rwanda, or any other African country, has solved every food-system challenge. It demonstrates that systematic policymaking, measurement, accountability and sustained implementation can produce results. African countries should become far more willing to learn from one another. Successful irrigation policies, insurance schemes, digital platforms, extension systems, land-management practices and post-harvest technologies developed in one part of Africa should not take decades to reach another. Continental integration must include the movement of knowledge, technology and successful policy—not only commodities. Kampala must not become another declaration Africa has now entered a new phase. The Kampala CAADP Strategy and Action Plan covers 2026–2035. Its ambitions include mobilising US$100 billion in investment, increasing agrifood output by 45 per cent, tripling intra-African trade in agricultural goods and services, and reducing post-harvest losses by half. These are worthwhile objectives. But Africa should have learned one decisive lesson from Maputo and Malabo: the success of Kampala will not be determined by the eloquence of its declaration. It will be determined by execution. Governments should translate Kampala into measurable national targets. Progress should be published regularly. Agricultural budgets should be transparent. Performance should be assessed not merely by money allocated, but by results achieved: productivity increased, farmer incomes raised, post-harvest losses reduced, hectares irrigated, markets connected, food processed locally and hunger eliminated. Accountability must move from continental conference halls into national political systems. By 2035, Africans should not require another summit to explain why commitments made in 2025 were not fulfilled. The next decade must be different The objective assessment after 23 years is clear. Africa has progressed, but not fast enough. It produces more, but has not transformed enough. It has created continental frameworks, but implementation remains uneven. It has developed sophisticated policies, but too many farmers remain poor. It possesses extraordinary agricultural potential, yet 309 million Africans still experience hunger. That contradiction is no longer acceptable. Africa does not need another grand agricultural vision. The continent already knows broadly what must be done. It needs disciplined execution. Farmers must be able to obtain affordable finance, access reliable water and energy, reach larger markets, reduce post-harvest losses and receive a fair return for their labour. African businesses must process more of what African farmers produce. African countries must trade food with one another more easily. African research institutions must develop technologies suited to African soils, climates and crops. Governments must treat food systems as strategic national and continental infrastructure, not as a residual concern confined to rural policy. And African consumers must have access not merely to sufficient calories, but to safe, affordable and nutritious food. Twenty-three years after Maputo, Africa must therefore confront a difficult question: Will Kampala become another declaration reviewed with disappointment a decade from now, or will it mark the point at which Africa finally converts its agricultural potential into food security, food sovereignty and economic power? The answer will not be found in another communiqué. It will be found on African farms, in African factories, across African borders, and ultimately on African food tables.
