Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, (New Ziana) – The African Union said on Monday it is targeting to boost agriculture production, triple continental trade in agricultural products and cut imports by 2025 as part of promoting the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

These are part of the objectives being pushed under the AU’s Common African Agro Parks (CAAPs) program, officials said following the inaugural meeting of the CAAPS Steering Committee.

“The Covid-19 pandemic further exposed Africa’s vulnerability to food and nutritional security due to our enormous dependence on food imports, which has been exacerbated by the breakdown of food supply chains,” said the AU Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Environment, Josefa Leonel Correia Sacko.

Implementation of CAAPs pushes for strategic alliances among member states and public and private partnerships to boost agricultural financing.

It also aims to halve the current level of post-harvest losses, halving poverty through better agricultural growth and transport,increasing resilience in livelihoods and production systems to climate variability and other shocks.

African agricultural imports from outside are estimated at over US$50 billion annually and part of this money is expected to be channeled internally through improving internal trade in the context of the AfCFTA.

In 2020 alone, the continent imported rice worth US$ 7 billion and about US$3.6 billion worth of maize/corn, which is a staple in most African countries.

The AU expects agricultural trade through the continental free trade area to jump to around $110 billion by 2025.

Despite Africa having a significant percentage of the world’s uncultivated arable land, and the youngest population on the planet, “still, we see that many of them are not interested in conventional agriculture because of the tedious work involved and the low remuneration,” Sacko said.
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