The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) is at the heart of efforts by African governments under the AU/NEPAD initiative to accelerate growth and eliminate poverty and hunger among African countries. The main goal of CAADP is to help African countries reach a higher path of economic growth through agriculturally-led development which eliminates hunger, reduces poverty and food insecurity, and enables expansion of exports. As a program of the African Union, it emanates from and is fully owned and led by African governments. Although continental in scope, it is an integral part of national efforts to promote agricultural sector growth and economic development. It is not a set of supranatural programs to be implemented by individual countries. It is rather to be understood as a common framework, reflected in a set of key principles and targets that have been defined and set by the Heads of State and Government, in several documents and declarations in order to: (i) guide country strategies and investment programs, (ii) allow regional peer learning and review, and (iii) facilitate greater alignment and harmonization of development efforts. The following are the main principles and targets which define the CAADP framework:
- the principle of agriculture-led growth as a main strategy to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of poverty reduction;
- the pursuit of a 6% average annual sector growth rate at the national level;
- the allocation of 10% of national budgets to the agricultural sector;
- the exploitation of regional complementarities and cooperation to boost growth;
- the principles of policy efficiency, dialogue, review, and accountability, shared by all NEPAD programs;
- the principles of partnerships and alliances to include farmers, agribusiness, and civil society communities;
- the implementation principles assigning the roles and responsibility of program implementation to individual countries; that of coordination to designated Regional Economic Communities; and that of facilitation to the NEPAD Secretariat.
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