 On behalf of CSIS, I would like to welcome you all here today to these panel discussions. It is a special privilege to have five ministers of agriculture here from Mali, Liberia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique. And that's a rather rare occurrence. So we consider this a special, very special event. And we also have senior officials from the State Department, USAID, and the Partnership to Cut Hunger. And it's always a pleasure to have Peter McPherson here, who will be making some opening comments as well. My name is Bill Garvelink. I'm a senior advisor here at CSIS, a new one. I've spent most of my career at USAID and the State Department, and most recently I was the first deputy coordinator for development for Feed the Future. My successor is here, Jada McKenna. And I also helped set up the Bureau for Food Security and was the first head of that Bureau. So these issues are very important to me. I would like to make just a couple of comments, and then I will turn it over to Peter McPherson. I'm sure today will be very interesting and insightful. And I'm sure of that because I had the opportunity to talk to a number of the participants last week in Iowa. So I know the discussion is going to be very interesting. The CATAP process has provided a framework for African countries to develop their agricultural programs and to establish their priorities. And CATAP has also been an avenue for donors to engage in that process and for the United States that's through the Feed the Future initiative. And I think this effort has been highly successful, and I think we will all look forward to hear the minister's comments about the CATAP process and the role that donors have played in that particularly Feed the Future. And we're very much interested in the minister's thoughts and recommendations for the future. The public sector's relationship with the private sector, both the international private sector and the national private sectors of African countries are very important to this process as we all know and to the sustainability of what the African countries and the donors together have been working on. So another area of interest for the panels today to talk about is the role of the private sector, the linkages with the African governments and the additional linkages that are being thought about in the future. And a final comment is that for many years, U.S. land grant universities have worked with ministries of agriculture and with African universities to develop a cadre of agricultural specialists and scientists. Unfortunately, that process has waned a bit over the last decade or two as U.S. funding has diminished. Hopefully, one of the things we can talk about in the two panels a bit is the importance of this relationship and how we can revive it and maybe modify the training and education that is being offered to fit the current needs of the African governments now as they work more closely with the private sector than in past years. So those are a couple of issues that hopefully will come out during the course of the discussion. And with that, I'll turn it over to Peter McPherson. Well, good to see everyone. My name is Peter McPherson. I'm here at least in one capacity as Chair of the Board of the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa. It was the partnership with AID and USDA resources that was able to, we were extremely pleased to be able to facilitate the five ministers of agriculture being here in this country to the World Food Prize and now here in Washington. We've always felt that it was just critical for those African voices to be heard. In fact, when the partnership was founded 10 years ago, I was then President of Michigan State, and we put this together with some very key people in this country. It was Senator Dole and some others, Lee Hamilton, and then in Africa a set of presidents including the then President of Mali, President Conor Ray, and then President of Mozambique, Sasano, were critical and involved. President of Ghana, who we got a World Food Prize here just this last week, all were involved in putting this program, this partnership together. So we have seen from the beginning that this was important to have African voices and U.S. voices together to make it work. Of course, this excellent meeting hosted by CSISC has been, is an opportunity that we've had today and other times Joanna was reminding me I'm supposed to be here next Friday as well, another event. So welcome to everybody for what I think will be an excellent opportunity. Now, as I think about development, I'd make a couple points. One, when you look over the history of countries that have made progress and haven't made progress, there's a lesson in my view, one of the lessons, is that countries who have taken charge of their own country, their own future have been those most likely to succeed and sustained economic progress. And the countries that we have here today, the ministries from these countries, have each in their own way said we're going to do this ourselves. We need help, we need advice, but we're going to take charge of our own future. And I think that's just so critical. And I believe the results that you see in each of these countries, Liberia is having, it's come out of hard, hard times, but there's some real progress there. You can look down the line. So that's lesson one. Development should be country-driven with a broad-based economic and social agenda of a country in our view. Two, countries make progress if they have some degree of political stability and they have reasonable economic policies. Now, everybody's going to debate about what's reasonable. But in my view, there's no cookie cutter. What's important, again, is that those politics and those economic policies and that agenda is country-driven. Now, Africa, of course, through the catap process has an Africa approach. And I think this working together and sort of driving these key things together has in fact, particularly the last year and a half or so, was picked up steam, has in fact helped drive change and opportunity in so much of Africa. Well, those are the general concepts, but what are some of the specifics? In countries with a large rural population, there's no way not to have food and agriculture be a central agenda. Hence, feed the future. In addition, it's clear that you need new technology. Feed the future is working on that with you. This will take time. You need human resource development and capacity building. Bill mentioned some of that. You need the role of the private sector. I think there's some core concepts in all this, and I know that our panel with lots of experience will comment on that, and I look forward to hearing those views. Thank you so much. Well, good afternoon, everyone, and welcome. I have to say three or four years ago it would have been almost unimaginable to have such a big group assembled, and to think of having five ag ministers here at CSIS was a little bit far out at the time, and so I think the fact that we've got such a fantastic program, such a fantastic audience indicates the importance that food security is taken in our development policy, and I also think the fact that a place like CSIS is working on this issue indicates the importance of food security and ag development as a central part of our overall foreign and security policy, and that's very much the spirit in which we try to think about the issue. I want to acknowledge very important actors in today's activities, Michelle McNabb, who's the new face of the partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa, and Daniel Caranja and their whole team, who really, we could not have brought the ministers here, so we really appreciate them bringing these ministers to us. We're waiting for Minister Magambe from Tanzania, but we'll go ahead and get started because we have, I think, a great set of discussion points today. What we'll do is we'll spend about one hour in our first panel really talking about Cat Up and Feed the Future, spend about an hour in our second panel talking about the private sector, and then Assistant Secretary of State Jose Fernandez will be with us for sort of some closing remarks. He has been hosting some discussions with several ministers on different types of technology and biotechnology and agriculture. We'll close out with some thoughts from him. So with us this morning or this afternoon, we've got Minister Alhassane from Mali, Minister Chenoweth from Liberia. We will have Minister Magambe from Tanzania, and we've got Jada McKenna, who's the new deputy coordinator for development for Feed the Future. And I think what we've got is a very wide range of experiences and wide range of situations in each of your countries. Minister Chenoweth said, look, I think everyone really wants to spend time asking questions. So I think that I will not give any more introductory comments, but I'd like to have our ministers open with a few comments and then get some reactions, and then I'd like to have Jada sort of follow up with her overall reactions and a response from the U.S. government side, and then open for your questions. So I think I really have one major overarching theme and one minor theme I'd like to bring up. Our overarching theme really is that we've made some real progress on food security. The U.S. has stood up the Feed the Future program. Each of your countries has been engaged in the cat-up efforts and goals and implementation, and I think today we'd really like to hear about how everything is going in each of your countries and just have you comment on where things stand. My minor question that I'd like to ask you to comment on at some point in our discussion has to do with something that both Peter and Bill raised, which is the future of your agricultural workforce and your technology. We at CSIS are finishing up a report on U.S.-African cooperation around agriculture science, and we'd be very interested to hear how you're thinking about your research, science, and education plans for each of your countries. But I think, first of all, let's hear your overall framing remarks. And Minister Chenoweth, can we start with you and then we will turn to you, Minister Hussani. Okay, thank you very much. You know, when I hear cat-up, I just want to play our jingle and dance. Because cat-up is something that we embrace across the continent. For the first time, it is homegrown. It had leadership from our bosses, from our leaders, and they had participation from us as agriculturalists and foresters and others in the sector. So we feel that we own it. We also had the enormous task of explaining it to our population in a language that they could understand. So that down to the small farmers, for many of us, we did it the typical African way. We prepared jingles and said everything we wanted to say about cat-up and people dance and listen to it. And so you can go, small farmers talk about cat-up. And cat-up to them means that all they understand is that cat-up will help to improve their agriculture. And that's good enough for us. But another thing I like about it is that it gave us as a continent an opportunity to see agricultural and food security, food and nutrition security in our country with a broad spectrum of what is happening in South Africa and what is happening in Mali and what's happening in each of our countries that we don't necessarily have to duplicate. The other thing I like is that we now have, because we understand, we help each other. And I can tell you it's like a peer review, every step of the way in becoming a Ocada compact country because first thing before you could start talking about it you had to develop your local program and make your leader proud that you would become a Ocada compact country. Next door to us was our big sister, Ghana. Ghana was beating us at everything. You know, we had our country completely destroyed. They were there before. They were never so completely destroyed. They had rebuilt. We were a hippie country, highly indebted poor country. They were, but they had settled it. And we thought at least there's that spot number seven. So Liberia would try very hard to beat Ghana at number seven, getting number seven, and we did. So we are number seven, Ghana is number eight. But now anyway, we had the program and on a serious note, we had to come back now and have input, get up all of the excitement, develop a program for implementation. That program of implementation had to be so all-inclusive or across the board, make sure they fitted into long range or planned, it was tough. Especially when you are head of an agency like mine in Liberia, they cover everything from forestry to fisheries to cooperative to whether it's the birds or the rats or the whatever, they're part of the things we should pay attention to. So to get all of that together in a comprehensive program was not easy. Especially so that one of our biggest losses in Liberia was in our human capacity we were working with capacity strength of 130%, little less than 30% in our agency, but we did. We also took it to the last level of where you enter a global competition to put your package on the table and have it scrutinized by people you didn't even know and then you stood to win some money. The maximum you could win was $50 million. We won $46.5 million. We were so delighted. So now that we have that $46.5 million that the program for utilization of that money also has to fit into the Kata or plan. It also has to fit into the Feed the Future because we are a nation that have taken ownership. Ownership of what we do and what will be our destiny. So we make sure that even if it's a program like Feed the Future we make sure that government has a contribution in it so that we can sustain the benefits of it afterwards. So that's basically what Kata means to us in Liberia. And I must say that it opens some sensitivity across the continent. Everybody knows that we in Sierra Leone were starting from scratch. So we get a lot of assistance from the region, from the African region in terms of training. Our people, they have opened their doors to our students to go to their universities. We cross with research or information using their research institute as we try to rebuild ours. So I think Kata has done more than just force us to think about agricultural development. It has forced us to think of how to work together as a nation so that we can use the resources internally and from outside or more efficiently. Lastly, I think because people have seen from the outside investors that we are planning, we're not guessing. We're taking the time to lay out our frameworks and we're sticking to our plans with weaker rooms. We, even in a new country, because we were the oldest country, we still are on the continent, but in terms of independence, we have six years under our belt of coming back and trying to rebuild. But even in that atmosphere, we have invested $17 billion worth of foreign investment over the past five and a half years. And of that investment, over $5 billion is in the agricultural sector. That will create in the next nine years because it's not 10 anymore, 71,000 jobs for our country. I'd like to stop there and leave it with you. Okay, thank you very much. Mima, do you want to come up? Minister El-Hassani, we're going to have Mima help translate if that's okay. And I think your country has some different approaches and you've focused on different types of markets and supply chains. We'd like to hear you comment. Now I'm ready. First of all, thank you to the interpreter. I had a whole new role these last week, a whole new role. He gave me a big service. A big service. I have provided a great service. You will owe me one on this one. Ah, that's PPP. Since he doesn't have money to pay me, I will be repaid in hectares so we'll have a proper PPP. Thank you very much for everyone attending in large numbers and quality. The room is full so it must be that the subject is interesting. And that gives us much pleasure as African participants. And that means others must be interested in what we're doing and who we are so that pleases us. So I must say that Africa should be proud to have such an extensive and detailed program of our culture development. And what it really is demonstrating that we're recognized and we cannot do it alone. We really need a united Africa. And that's, you know, behind the United Africa we have been able to advance things. Wait, pardon? You tricked me there. So as Americans or the Brits say, we are people we can do what people can do. It just has to do with us getting down to working. And what is all about the PPP? So the whole process is really now developing at the national level with the cat-up. So in Mali the process was very inclusive and very participative. With all actors participating, public, private and civil society that are associated as partners in development. And this is why we wanted to be sure that it was covered from top to bottom, which is why it took us a little bit of time. And we have then at the end of that signed the eco-op compact. And that pact was signed by the Minister of Integration at the AU level, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Minister of Agriculture, the Commissioner of Agriculture at the DECOAS, the representatives of development partners, representatives of the territorial collectivities and representatives of civil society. So all of these actors need to be well informed of the decisions made through each of the steps. So we presented our investment plan within the cat-up compact in Dakar in 2010. December 2010. Has been reviewed and amended and transmitted to eco-op so there will be a sub-member so would then be submitted to all the various partners. So all of the extra time taken to develop this elaborate plan now we've made up by being able to attract a lot of money into the country. So there's not going to be a ranking between us and Liberia. It's just a matter of both of all of us being performing. The ECOWAS has now already come back with their commentary and we're now in discussion with the African Development Bank in fact into a major project for irrigation of rice. And why rice? Because rice in fact is becoming the very single largest growing cereal consumed in West Africa. So it's not so much that it's necessarily the aesthetic the best or the healthy but it is the one that is most cherished by the consumer. As concerns the land preparations and new technologies to be utilized there are many needs. Today Mali produces cereals and excess in their own requirements. But we still run the periods where we have shortages because when we produce we do not have the proper infrastructure for post-harvest storage. So even though Mali is producing more than they require there's still a certain level of malnutrition in the population. And this is particularly the case because the cereals that are produced are not necessarily processed in such factories. And this is particularly the case because the cereals that are produced are not necessarily processed in such fashion to be consumed easily and to be nutritionally balanced. You might say in this area of processing value added women are the most active. They're already in the small and medium sized enterprises. But there's also new industry being born. And which is why as I did this morning I appeal to all those wishing and interested in coming into investments in any value added agro-processing agro-business. People welcome to come invest in the production, in the transformation and in the commercialization. Growth rate of Mali is around 5%. And that's primarily thanks to agriculture. So even though we've already surpassed the Maputo agreements that we're investing 13% agriculture, I'm always pressing the Minister of Finance to do yet more for agriculture because that's where the growth is. And every time I come to the U.S. I have the way to grow. Every time I come to the U.S. I have the will, the wish to speak about the Mali and Mungo. There's something that bothers me. When Americans come to Mungo they absolutely love the taste of the Mungo but they don't allow it to come into the U.S. So I really, really encourage that in line with the Goa that the sector of Mungo could be developed for export to the U.S. So I'll take my colleague here from Liberia to still say that in the end Mali is the absolute best tasting in the world. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, thanks to our translator and to Minister Alasani. So, okay, we're going to move now to Jada McKenna. Jada, we'd like to just kind of take your response and then also hear your thoughts for what's coming up as we look forward. Thank you very much. Got it? Okay. Thank you to CSIS for hosting this and to the partnership to cut hunger and poverty in Africa and to all of you here and especially to the ministers on the panel. I'm very honored to represent the U.S. government here on this panel and to speak on this as your partner and we are very excited to be your partners in this endeavor because all of your focus countries and we're very excited about it. As all of you know, Feed the Future is the U.S. government's global hunger and food security initiative and I know you've heard of it a lot today and also in the past week but I wanted to start there because our commitment of three and a half billion dollars over three and a half years is a small part of a total commitment that was made by the G8 at La Quila and I was very excited to hear both ministers Alasani and Chenoweth speak about the multi donor trust fund that's part of that initiative gas but it's over 10 percent of our own U.S. initiative has been committed to funding gas and in this way it's really exceeded our expectations in a lot of ways and it's an integral part of our bilateral funding. The principles of Feed the Future the Feed the Future relies on our country ownership, accountability as well as multi sector and multi stakeholder collaboration and what we've seen in gas as well as our bilateral efforts really highlights that. The great thing about gasp was it really provided incentives to a lot of countries to hurry up and complete their kind of investment plans and kind of in that rush we still were able to get great quality and really worked hard to get consultation across all the sectors as you talked about because at the end of the day we know the only thing that works is really country ownership of these projects and as development actors our goals are to work ourselves out of jobs and the way to that sustainable inclusive economic growth will be through that country ownership and through that multi sector approach that really incorporates the civil society the farmers themselves as well as countries. At the end of the day as we've implemented Feed the Future the important thing to note about the CADAP investment plans is that they are not just documents for donors to get donor funding and both ministers really touched on that I mean they are meant to be investment blueprints for both private investment and public investment and we've been really thrilled to see that as we've implemented and worked with our country partners to develop our own bilateral programming that people are thinking about both sides and there are processes Tanzania item minister if he were here today when he does come he will talk about SAG-COT and that really innovative public-private collaboration the World Economic Forum really provided the platform for SAG-COT to expand and from there actually SAG-WEF has now partnered with CADAP which just shows you how important CADAP is to look at how to replicate that process of countries looking at their investment plans and picking places where they are inviting the private sector both local and international and other public sector companies to come in and work with them to develop impact at scale in implementing our own bilateral funding we have really chosen to pursue a path that will get to that development impact at scale so we have worked with countries to identify certain value chains and regions where we will focus our funding to really demonstrate to people that this works and when actors come together so when we partner with the countries and the World Bank and other donors and we really put our minds and our money and our energy towards specific areas you will see success at scale and we're excited to be starting that process and some countries are further along than others as a US government we particularly feel like our strengths lie in research and development innovation and I know we are working with all of you and with your National Research Institutes as well as with the US University community and other actors to bring improved technologies to bear in this effort. The other focus for our programming really is on the empowerment of women which you both have spoken of as well and one thing that we're excited about is Women's Empowerment Agriculture Index that we are developing with Oxfama with IFPRI and we're piloting it and what we'll do is in the zones of influence so where we're working with in countries we will look to see how women have been empowered and their influence over assets and access to the benefits of our programming and other donor programming in those areas so we're very excited hopefully that will provide another ranking mechanism another way for you guys to aim to beat Ghana and others so we're looking forward to seeing that and we've also really been focused on nutrition and looking at decreasing under nutrition and working to weave that into the Cata of Agricultural Development Plans particularly focused on children in that kind of thousand day window so it's been, we've learned quite a bit the country ownership dimensions have taken off in ways that I don't think even we've foresaw which has really been a credit to all of the governments and moving forward aggressively I mean, Mali for Mali to talk about 13% of its budget to even exceed the cat up commitment is truly a remarkable and an example that we hope that others will follow so thank you for having me and I'll stop there so we can get questions thank you Jada and I have a note that Minister Mugambe had to go to the airport to catch his flight so we won't see him today but we've got plenty to talk about and some of the other things that I didn't mention early on but have come up include the question of nutrition and how do you improve nutrition as part of an ag development approach which I think it's a challenge, it's difficult but there is a lot of opportunity but it's going to be one of the difficult nuts to crack so it'll be interesting to see how that evolves I want to honor Minister Chenoweth's mandate that we take questions as many questions because I know a lot of you are curious if I could bundle two or three questions at a time please wait for a microphone I'll call on you then state your name and your affiliation and your question make it short so we can take as many who wants to go first okay in the back here we'll get a microphone over to you I would very much like to hear both of the ministers comment on what you just said that is how you link nutritional goals with agriculture development your name and affiliation Chris Goldthwaite I'm a member of the partnership and I'm also a consultant here in town okay how do you link nutrition is the first question another question we can take David thank you my name is David Hansen I'm with the association for public and land grant universities my question has more to do with the catap process a formation of the catap compacts and now implementation it really has to do with the role of higher education research and technology development in the process it's my understanding that the catap compacts were done primarily with ministries of agriculture and higher agricultural education rests with ministries of education therefore in talking with some of my colleagues from African higher education institutions they feel like perhaps they've been sidelined in this process with the formulation of catap compacts now I was just wondering your perspective on this as well as implementation of the compacts now and how higher agricultural education might play a more formative role in the process okay Mima could you translate the question for minister Alsani hi Charlotte Hebba-Brand from International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council together with the partnership we looked at Agoa and I wanted to come to minister Alsani's comments about the mangoes from Mali I confess to only having eaten mangoes in Burkina Faso and they were delicious I look forward to eating Mali's mangoes as well could you one of the conclusions we reached when we looked at the rather disappointing impact Agoa has had on increasing African agricultural exports to the US was in fact in this realm of standard so would you mind just in a non-technical way giving us a sense of where is the problem why is it so hard to get mangoes from Mali here in the US just to explain a little bit how long have you been trying to get an imported approval what are the hindrances on your side in Mali and what may be some of the hindrances here with the US government thank you what are the problems you have to finally export the mangoes in Malien the obstacles you have encountered even with the Agoa program currently it is very limited production that comes for Agoa in your opinion okay so we have trade and phytosanitary guidelines we have higher education and we have nutrition that should give us something to start with let me start with the coordination or Ministry of Agriculture in Liberia led the process it was the hub for the Qatar formulation but we have to under our new mandate we have to work inter ministerial collaboration and it depends on what the subject is anything we do in agriculture we work with Ministry of Planning Ministry of Commerce Ministry of Youth and Sport 65% of our population is age 0 to 85 we have to work with Youth and Sports Ministry of Health because as you know an agricultural problem can quickly become a health problem Ministry of of Public Works because as we are trying to rebuild the country we work with Public Works so every new road that goes in so that there is some farm to market road we do not let them get away with calling it Fida Road Fida Road is one thing a farm to market road is another so we work very closely with them now only higher education in Liberia is not even Ministry of Education there is an institute for higher education that we work with but the universities the institutions are always a part of these plans then after we have gone through with the private sector and our development partners as Makulia said after we have gone through that we cannot take that document anywhere except it comes to the full cabinet and have cabinet understanding and endorsement and then we also take it to our legislature not to get their endorsement we do not want to get into that kind of worms but we have to go and educate them on what the process is so that when it is time for the budget they will not see it as a strange animal so we are together on that is not held only with the Ministry of Agriculture now with the nutrition issue from the 70s I have been on this work of talking about food from that World Food Conference in 1970 talking about food food security and leaving out nutrition when you leave out nutrition you have what you have nutrition in most countries nutrition does not have a home is it in Ministry of Health is it in Ministry of Health where is it if you look at the legislature putting agencies together nutrition is all over the place I am delighted then finally we are beginning to talk about food and nutrition and so our CADA program did take consideration for example we have made one we have a serious nutrition problem as you can imagine we have completely changed the growing of sweet potatoes which is cheap easy to reach good nutrition from growing of the white sweet potato to growing of the red fresh sweet potatoes farmers have accepted that so well mothers are to my delight one of those in their children's hand and better still giving them a little bag of peanuts with it so we try to push the nutrition message we do not have that much expertise we have gone back and hire retired people that are putting together the message but we do have people in training so as much as we can we try to integrate the nutrition right now our second staple is who is not a rice eater I am and I think rice is delicious and nutritious but we are good friends go after we are also looking at our second staple which as you know is mainly energy we are now part of a program with the international institute of tropical agriculture which is next door to us on experimenting with the nutrition infused cassava for us our job would be getting people to eat yellow cassava yellow looking cassava instead of white we hope that we will not have the case of the golden rice so we are beginning to talk about it now anything that we introduce that changes people's taste and preference or forces them to eat something encourage them to eat something that they are not used to we try to push the education along with it and get mothers especially to understand the messages especially talk about the mangoes not especially mangoes I will also talk about nutrition and training I would like also to speak about nutrition and nutrition I would like also to be sure to speak not just about mangoes but about the nutrition and the aspect the questions asked about higher education I will take the permission with our moderator for that nutrition issues are managed by the Ministry of Health so for us the issues of nutrition are managed by the Ministry of Health but it is a major issue for the government as well Ministry of Agriculture is charged with the production after that there is the whole policy of imbuing the nutritional aspect into the foods that are produced particularly for the children and the women particularly the accent is the newborns and the children but also the schools particularly emphasis then is put on pregnant women expecting women and children and in the case of the training we are dealing with the training the government has adopted a national policy of school food so in this in this whole scheme of nutrition government has taken up a national plan of school feeding program and this policy has the advantage to keep the children at school to be able to feed them so that they can go to school and this policy also has a big advantage in making sure that the children stay in school longer particularly in the rural areas so given that so much of our children are coming out of the rural areas it's important that this program be maintained to keep the kids in school in the rural areas so we are working very closely with the world food program in the school feeding programs and something very interesting is happening in Mali in the past a world food program used to buy American corn for the school feeding programs in Mali flour and corn seeds to give to schools so the national production was transformed into Mali I am very angry because I was fed to the school with products from yesterday from home that we give to the children I am very happy to say that when I now visit the schools and the cafeterias those cafeterias are now supplying food that is locally processed maize that is locally processed as concerns higher education we have an institute of rural economy that forms researchers we have an institute of rural economy that actually receives researchers there is a superior institute for agricultural training where people are trained at the institute where there are researchers of agricultural research we have about 250 researchers in this institute we have approximately 200 researchers it's a little bit less than the number of researchers in Ambrapo in Brazil but still a good effort in our part we have cooperation with American universities to perfect the training with all of the research program there is a tight collaboration close collaboration with the American universities in that training program especially in certain specific areas such as the insect resistant plants and other drought resistant plants for those who are concerned about the exportation of mango as concerns the problem of exporting mangoes it's a difficult question to answer it's a difficult question to answer the first time I came to the United States in the plane when I filled the documents concerning the food you brought with you I almost returned before coming because I had a school I thought I was going to be expelled there are restrictions concerning the importation of food in the States I would like to thank the Secretary of Agriculture because we are now collaborating to see how we could actually meet the requirement the FITO Sanitary Requirements to bring the mangoes here it's a little bit just to play my friend with the Americans that I said it's only to make a little bit of a joke about Americans that are in the United States they are in the United States they are in the United States to make a little bit of a joke about Americans that I said that because we are already exporting quite a bit of mango to Europe and we have also the African market so the last season we exported 11,000 tons of mango 5000 towards Europe and 6000 inside African continent so there is quite a market regionally in the African continent we haven't yet fully exported but we would like to see the African or the Malian mango even further and cross the ocean thank you very much alright I think we have time for just one more round of questions we'll go to the front and then we'll go to the back thank you my name is Joshua Walton and I don't represent anyone but myself the question I would like to pose is that given the fact that some 80% of the farmers in Africa especially the small farmers are women they do most of the work what specifically have you put forward in your countries in terms of policy and processes one to assure that women rural women many of whom have yet to learn how to read and write have their rights protected in terms of controlling the revenues from the crops they produce secondly what's being done to encourage women to become professional agricultural advisors so that they can work with this majority of farmers at the local level if I could read the question for thank you absolutely for its excellence Mr. Minister the question I asked and what to give some 80% of all the farmers in Africa are women especially the small farmers what do you do at home in terms of policy and actions to ensure that the rights of these women are well protected concerning the profits and the revenues they make and secondly what do we do to encourage more women to study and become professional animatrices in the demand of agriculture and to work side by side with this family thank you can you come and replace me and then the last question we'll take from Philip Thomas in the back hi my name is Phil Thomas I'm employee of the government accountability office here in Washington we do a lot of work on food aid and food security and in 2008 we critiqued the global food security situation and we were highly critical of donors the US government African countries NGOs just not really doing enough in terms of food security and we looked at CATUP and I believe CATUP you say was established in 2003 there had been very little progress in terms of meeting the goals and objectives of CATUP and many people criticize CATUP as just being a talking forum and that there was no real action to support the framework and now there seems to be a shift to make it a much more substantive effort with more on the ground activity and I was wondering if you could describe what has happened and why I can translate in speed so in 2008 thank you with the US government there was a whole analysis of CATUP program and the criticism of donors in this formation of CATUP and in 2008 CATUP was more less than action more word than action and you can see that since the last year since 2010 that there is more movement towards action so from your perception what is there that transforms more to a positive transformation of CATUP what are we doing for women you are right 80% of those in production or involved in producing food or in the agriculture sector are women and for some foremost women at all stages or the female are targeted for education because if you look at any of our statistics you will see that the figures are not balanced whereas our population is almost 50-50 is always so many boys and one third or even less the girl child is a target point for our investment across the board we also are encouraging the girl child to go to higher education because of the scholarships scholarships for me in the agriculture sector which is the one ministry that has targeted scholarships as I told you we will have 71,000 jobs we need to train people to take up those jobs so you study agriculture you get a scholarship if you need it but we do have I do have a bias or to make sure that every one of those young ladies get a scholarship the next thing is that when this government took over we started to rebuild six years ago our children had not gone to school for 16, 17, 18 years because there were no schools going on so we in building the education sector again we put in two things for the younger for the youth and below and the very young children for the youth especially the rapid education I don't understand it but it works you take a 16 year old and they go into the classroom for the first time it is like day and night God bless whoever put together those rapid education system it works but we also have it for women for women farmers for rural women or the other education programs so tied to the farmers' field school that teach them how to use how to use their hands in the field there are also evening classes for other education and you have to be in an audience and see a rural woman that used to sign her name with dipping her thumb in an indelible ink and now seem proudly showing her little book because they have these little books that they use seem very proudly I can spell my name I can write my name and they will not let you go away until they take a piece of chalk or paper and write their name and stand up and spell it so they are getting some form of education themselves and then as I said as the farmer's field school programs of import I told the group earlier that the wild food program is feeding children in 1,400 schools across our country right now with locally produced products but most of it comes for women and the Liberian women are not or the typical women that we know of take that money and then the men take it from them they don't before and now they were an economic power and they know how to hide their money and how to invest it and one of the things that we do when we buy produce from these women through the purchase for progress under the WFP or the government owns program we pay them cash because we work with the banks to take the cash you receive the product you pay them cash so that nobody is saying you have to stay home and mind your baby and send the men to collect the money they receive their money at their farm gate you ask about the food aid most cases now food brought in is monetized and the money is used to support local agricultural development and that's an arrangement that is made with many of the people who support us in that way so we have this land tenure finally after 64 years of independence we are going there we are dealing with our land tenure issue we have a land commission that is looking that is working with all of us going through the nuts of the land tenure issue and it's a long process as you know it was not built in a day and it will look at land tenure issue you see in Liberia the inheritance law gives equal right to men and women to boys and girls we don't have a disparity so we have that benefit on our books and land for farming is not given to the man for the woman even traditional land you can be a woman and you will get traditional land so if you divorce the land is not taken from you so at least we have that bit ahead in it so the land tenure issue will be that final niche where people can have a piece of paper to the land that they farm and be able to make better judgment on a better decision about what they grow and what they do with their land in their hands and you can be sure their children will eat and they will go to school very interesting questions the right of women because I think Madame talked to me about the right of traditions in Africa which have very strong survival and I speak under the ambassador of Malim and I speak under the Malian ambassador of the US there are certain ethnic groups in Mali where women have the right to work the land but do not necessarily have the legal right to the land because in the traditional customs it's the male lineage is the man that carries forward the patrimony of the family so historically under the monarchy at that point in time if the land were to go through the female lineage someone coming from outside could be acquiring the land and creating conflicts so that would say it's not inintelligent it's not necessarily unintelligent it's not necessarily unintelligent maybe it's not adapted to today's reality maybe it's not adapted to today's reality maybe it's not adapted to today's reality so for Mali then we have accepted the traditional law the utilization of land and there's also now the modern law which actually states that the land belongs to the state so what the government has done through a presidential decree was to assure that all the land the government has at least 10% does go back to women that's for development land improvements that the government puts forward because the government in fact while might invest in improving land it doesn't actually see manage it it goes back to the community so to assure it is why the 10% hence women have a minimum right of at least 10% of all the land that is improved to acquire land as the leader of the family that's over and beyond their right as head of family to be able to acquire land and there's a similar kind of law there that favors up to 5% of the land being passed through to youth today we have a national policy to really encourage women to advance so there's quotas established for the number of ministers there must be women as well as for the recruitment advancement into the higher civil service who pass the baccalaureate and governments also have allocated specific stipends for girls that pass their diploma high school diplomas so really today we find that the Malian woman is very active in the working day world we have a prime minister as a lady the secretary general government as a lady the number of women there are 11% of the women in parliament in the congress or women so we have women in all the various ministries as well as the political posts as mayors of towns and in fact today in the working day world in the economy they're advancing certainly in commerce and in business side so even if you look at the the commercialization of the seeds it's actually a women enterprise it's the national maize brand and this year she supplied 300 tons of nerica the new african rice into senegal as well as 80 tons of improved maize rice and she has many agro dealers and in fact her most of whom happen to be men working for her so today we're in a situation where we actually have women employing the men and now to mention you're completely outnumbered on this panel and you're the only man on this other table we're a little over time here but jada i wanted to give you a chance to just offer any closing remarks the one thing i would add is that what we're seeing in some countries is the setting up of implementation units or separate bodies because so many of these issues cross ministries and are so much richer and we have encouraged that where they've propped up we have been active and helping to set them up and encourage those so as other countries think to that we're happy to share knowledge and help to feed the future with that well excellent thank you so much please join me in thanking our panel and we'll invite the next panel up right away can we please take a seat grab your dinks and we'll start up please good afternoon so if i get irritable you'll know why so please sit down if i can introduce this the panel i'm mima nidelkovich in my spare time when i don't translate i get to be partner of the schaefer group in baton rouge louisiana and i'm also a board member of the partnership to cut hunger and poverty in africa and have been for a long time now and have been very very much keen on getting more and more of our african partners from the private sector involved with this discussion hence you will see on the on the board here i mean on this panel jack cunn from the private sector schaefer my group has been doing agro industry i think we're getting damn near 50 years now all over the continent we have been we're louisiana based companies we have been working on long and sugar cane rice aquaculture and then all of the cogeneration from power coming out of biomass any form of agro industrial waste is where we think is going to make both sense for power production as well as improving the efficiencies and profitability of agriculture i am also since a full disclosure here partnerships and have been for a decade before the terminology became sexy agro industry is very difficult to formulate public-private partnerships much easier in power sector where you have the independent power producer and then government picking it up in terms of the transmission but for agriculture every case is different it is difficult but it is for us or for me certainly the answer to the future and i'm happy to moderate this panel it is where the large and the small meet it is where the public and the private interest meet it is where really in the end i think we're going to find the answer to the additional productivity to feed the future feed everybody on the continent and in fact be an exporting continental food so those are my introductory comments as you know we will be focusing specifically on building strong and sustainable public-private sector partnerships we have on the panel with me i think you have the bio so i skipped the detailed introductions but minister of agriculture from Mozambique minister of agriculture from Kenya minister Koske and then my colleague on the board Mr. Jack Khan who is the CEO of Novel Group what i would like to do is ask each of you if you will those from the public sector from your perspective from yours on the private sector as to what is it really that governments could do more to really incentivize these sort of partnerships frankly in some of the interviews and investigation done as a partnership we've also seen Jack that from our own side, from the private sector side we often miss in the boat and i think it's critical that we really dive into how these sort of partnerships and common interests actually make the whole discussion of land grab frankly a null discussion avoid really an irrelevant discussion in the end if we really get down to all sides of interest being met so within that formulation if i could maybe give each of you i think we're one short so we would say five minutes each just in terms of introductory comments of perspectives i have then a couple of specific questions and then we open up to the floor as we did previously thank you minister minister from Mozambique absolutely and sorry i believe we've also been joined now by assistant secretary Fernandez is that correct and i do i was waiting to that he be here i want to be sure also to thank State Department and USDA in support of all of the activities that in fact the partnership our various partners and sponsors here have done both in Des Moines Iowa last week the world food prize as well as here and follow up today so thank you and welcome to the panel dear participant ladies and gentlemen all the protocol observant good afternoon Mozambique briefly it's a count on southern region Africa with the size of 800,000 square kilometers 21.8 million people in the arable land of 36 million hectares we are only using 10% of it we have 3 million hectares with the potential for irrigation and again we are just using 10% of it the growth rate of Mozambique it's 9% in average agriculture sector to the GDP with 24% Mozambique right now we are self-sufficiency in maize and cassava we are in progress towards self-sufficiency in rice and maize and pulses these are stopper food of Mozambique we do export banana, cashew nut cotton, sugar, timber and sesame it's in progress in protein provision restocking of beef progressive import substitutions in poultry meat and eggs extraction and progressive processing of hardwood native timber both for local use and export together with the commercial plantation of exotic forests this is happening since 1992 since Mozambique reached a peace agreement in 93 Mozambique it was a counter food aid as agriculturalist I believe we have a moral responsibility to feed people around the world and young generation have a very important responsibility to play important role to develop agriculture we have a 10 year agriculture development strategy that lies in four pillars research and extension infrastructure and equipment market and information institutional development for public sector reform for public private sector partnership together with education the investment setup in this case is that right now the Mozambican governor is contributing with 10.6% for the budget but the target is 10% we do have district development fund agriculture development fund youth development fund and other arrangement domestic arrangement made on microfinance and savings a millennial challenge account is there and I believe that the future have a greater window to participate on this investment plan arrangement if we come to the promotion of public and private sector partnership what I would like to share with you is that in Mozambique the private sector the 3-P we have Mozambican investment promotion center we do to facilitate all the procedure for the private sector to do the investment we have private sector council at national level and in each province we have a 10 province there are provincial council this council private sector council it meets once a year in that meeting the head of state president of republic is there to share and old cabinet member are there NGOs and government organization or other pattern they take place to report on what is the environment in Mozambique on private investment what is missing and to identify and share views about the to improve the private investment environment in agriculture sector we have agriculture promotion and support center so if you come to invest in agriculture this unit is there to assist you on where to invest how to invest due to this on the land issue what I can say that in Mozambique land invest when you come to invest in Mozambique in agriculture land and investment proposal should be in place the land process the access to land is on leasing base up to 50 years but if investment is done the land is yours you can sell investment you can transfer rights on heritage basis if the investment is done the leasing for 50 years but if you implement the plans the lands we say it's yours on the process of getting access to land a consultancy will be needed with the local community to make part of the project there are three levels of decision of the land the level number one is the provincial governor that can apply land up to 1000 hectares the minister of agriculture of Mozambique right now it's me yesterday it was somebody else on tomorrow never know you can apply up to 10,000 hectares more than 10,000 hectares should be the cabinet the council of the minister when investing Mozambique you have tax free facility and tax holiday up to 5 years there is always room to negotiate for few years more but not more than 10 years you can transfer capital if you invest there is a room to transfer capital you can employ a foreigner on your investment up to 10% but if you employ less there is a room to negotiate to get more tax facility exemption if you use local label come to invest in Mozambique if you are looking for project I can share some of the project available to invest seed industry is an area we are looking for investment on the research side there is also rooms if you are interested interested in doing developing research irrigation schemes for different crops biotechnology is needed we are we start operating with some institutions and thanks to Jose Fernandez he is here we have already had some meetings in Hayoa to see how far we can go with biotechnology to Mozambique and I thank you thank you minister Mr Koske Kenya was strong and private sector agriculture when it was still a dirty word in many places in Africa can we hear your perspective now going forward as others are catching up thank you for starting there because Kenya is by and large different from our neighbors from the point of view of private investment in agriculture in fact one could almost say that agriculture in Kenya is largely private even on a small scale basis it is private if you take the example of tea because we often talk of the tea production in Kenya because we are a leading producer when it started in Kenya it was a multinational crop from Brookbond and others 60% of the producers now are small scale and it has worked extremely well this is the same for coffee and the other crops where it is not often understood is in the area of food production itself here again we have people who have 6000 acres of land where they produce food but we also have the half acre ones who are also producing food the challenge of course for the small scale farmers despite I'll not go over the cut up arrangement because my colleague from Mozambique has covered all of us adequately what we have tried to do as a government there is to ensure that we have secure food production by providing seed which we produce 80% of in the country we still are in seed production as government because we feel that this is where we need to be sure that we can control the process we are not in marketing and I don't know how many of you from a small scale basis have tried to market crops I was thoroughly amused this morning when the world food program representative told us that he was brought up in Manhattan so some of these things we talk about are quite alien but now I was impressed by his knowledge so let me tell you very briefly about my experience in the marketplace no one should ever persuade you to take a ship because it just lies down and won't move I had the experience of selling chicken for some reason you would run around the building catch the chicken at night the following morning as a small child you have forgotten to feed it you get it to the market and it falls asleep and every buyer thinks that this one is sick they don't bite now if it is a perishable like a vegetable or a big banana you have carried it to the market you have no use for it taking it back if it is a banana will ensure that you get home with a bent neck and nobody will have use for it so this is still a problem for a lot of the rural areas in Kenya you will find that because we live in the Horn of Africa that in the last few months we have experienced starvation in some parts of the country while food is rotting in the other side again because of logistics marketing this is to be a logistics person is sometimes more profitable I think often more profitable than actually being the grower so here is an area where people can actually invest in if you are coming into Kenya as an investor in agriculture you shouldn't worry at all because there is already a very vibrant Kenyan and foreign private sector involvement in our agriculture I will actually tell you what we are trying to do as a government in terms of food is that because of the weather conditions we are being dragged back into the business of agriculture when in fact it has been rolling along perfectly as private sector and this is in attempting to ensure that we have enough food last year we didn't have enough maize and Kenyans have this idea that it maize meal and they will tell you they'll swear that this is our traditional food maize actually came to Kenya in 1917 so I don't know when it became our food but it is the thing that threatens to overthrow the government every time there is a problem with the weather in the northeastern now we are even feeding the people in northeastern Kenya on maize and telling them that this is their traditional food it wasn't so even 30 years ago but nevertheless we as a government have decided that we cannot now rely on the private sector only for maize because last year we have invested a lot of maize it disappeared across the borders because we do not actually restrict movement of products and in the middle of everything I think one has almost forgotten that there is a country over here called southern Sudan and their production base is not yet available and this is the market for the Kenyan farmer who is private and therefore free to move his food wherever he wants so we are trying to use the Tana Delta to grow food with private sector partnership which we can at least ensure that we are able to sell internally to areas which do not have food agriculture in Kenya is profitable the problem is we can do to encourage more people to do profitable agriculture other than giving them fertilizer and seed one of the problems we discovered was that there is very little borrowing in the private sector especially private sector here especially private small scale agriculture here we are working with the local banks the high street banks to actually train people to lend money to the agricultural sector it sounds very straightforward it sounds easy it isn't 16 years ago I walked to a bank to borrow money for agriculture they looked at me and said are you crazy then they gave me somebody to write a feasibility study for me he wanted 4 million shillings and I said I went to school if I had this amount of money I really don't need to farm so I had to sit up and write one myself then I got somebody who understood that it was better than I did to put it together for me at 3000 Kenya shillings so those of you who know 3000 shillings can't buy your mill in Kenya these days nevertheless I was able to access the money now who else how many women are going to be able to do that it is very difficult and one of the difficulties we realized had to do with collateral because our land got into such speculation that it was no longer possible to use land people gave you land as collateral then they went ahead and defaulted there was nothing you could do about that we are trying to work really hard with the private sector to restore that confidence one of the problems we know in agriculture especially with the livestock is to do with insurance now that is again an area where we are working with the private sector in Kenya and certainly anyone else is welcome to do so if you think of investing in agriculture in Kenya here is where you do not have such serious problems with do you have the human resource trained yes we have them I've listened to the debates this morning about the relationship between agriculture and the universities and I suppose for us in Kenya the technical schools before I came to this job happily I was in the minister of high education science and technology and this is where we develop our biosafety bill which I took to parliament within the first six months I was in that cabinet and it was essentially a draft from the universities and our technical schools we are trying to build more of those it went to parliament and became law so we have a law now the hard part started because unfortunately now I ended up in agriculture I have to implement this thing and this time it is a question of advocacy because there is such resistance because it all got wrapped up with people's businesses of importing maize and if you are importing and you are ahead of me then I'll go out and say that is GMO you are all going to die from it it's coming from America nobody has died in America out of eating anything like that I had a real serious problem with somebody who found out that we were getting potato seed from Holland and they said to me are you sure we are not going to die from this and I said have you looked at the touch those people are so healthy if we could look like them I think we would be safe but it's a question of people's interest and also Kenya is in this difficult situation where there is private sector understood well practiced a lot of people are involved then there is small scale it works but at the same time three eighths of Kenya if not more is arid and semi arid and this again differentiates Kenya from the other countries which have been represented here in fact reminds me of a book I read in the sixties or seventies called the western the rest of us when you are in Kenya you are thinking north eastern north and north eastern and the rest of us or if you like the rest of us and they because these are different terrains different environments different countries affected by different issues just when I left or just before I left the north is still starving parts of Kenya are suffering from droughts and in that area of the north eastern of course famine kills you kills you very slowly kills many people when the floods come they kill all of you in one day so we have this balance that we are trying to do what are we doing there as a government we are involved actually in growing food with the help of the population there get several families together they are doing very well our complication is that while our friends around the country are very enthusiastic and they are helping us what they are doing is that setting up their own villages where they will practice this agriculture but the question we have to ask collectively is how is this sustainable is this going to happen are you going to allow anybody who comes in as an NGO to plant this year and be absent next year that is going to be very difficult and this is where we ask our partners and our friends to work with us to see that perhaps we move forward I will leave it there thank you very much thank you minister we will come back I am sure there will be plenty of questions we will leave that issue right back in Jack Khan your CEO Novel Commodities many years of trading maybe you tell us what the company is about and why you are getting into production and what you would like to see from governments ladies and gentlemen Novel is typically one of this company moving from a trading activity into a production in two words we have a turnover of about a billion dollars in three commodities rice, sugar and cocoa in Africa as an African I have really been shocked by this food crisis in 2008 seeing suddenly prices rocketing and based really on the ignition for me was really that ban of imports of a number of commodities including rice out of a few countries in 2008 and really this has accelerated the volatility of the prices that we still suffer today I mean we have been seeing rice price going from 400 dollars to a thousand dollars in a period of a year within a year the impact for Mrs. Minister agriculture in Liberia bag of a rice going from 20 dollars typically to 50 dollars or more knowing what is the minimum wage in Liberia you can imagine the consequences suddenly we have been seeing all the head of states becoming traders calling their counterpart helpers helpers we are about to go to self-sufficiency but we are not there yet let me give you just two, three examples in terms of imports Liberia is importing 200,000 tons of rice per year for 120,000 to 120 million dollars yearly Senegal is importing more than half a billion dollars of rice Nigeria more than 2 billion 2 million tons of rice yearly are imported so it comes to the question for me how can rice being produced in the middle of Vietnam transported all the way down to the port of Ho Chi Minh put on a vessel transported around the world coming to West Africa discharged in the port of Abidjan then moved all the way to Bobo de lasso and this rice still is cheaper and is preferred by the local population there is a problem there there is a problem I would like that and I think the rice is rather a good example the Minister of Agriculture the Honorable Minister earlier said how important rice is to a number of countries in Africa I believe that today there is and I see really that the tone has been changing over the last two or three years and in that the future initiative has been very instrumental for the public awareness for all the stakeholders awareness of what could be done differently I'm really a private sector guy and I'm really we're engaging ourselves in a number of investments in Africa and basically how I'm seeing it really is that all the stakeholders have to have a common interest to have to make it happen all the stakeholders the first stakeholder are the communities the local communities at the households level the women, the children they have to be part of this global new agriculture for Africa they have to be part of it we would never have seen the chaos that we have seen in Liberia in Sierra Leone if the communities were owning something you do not destroy what belongs to you when you don't have anything then you go ahead and you destroy everything and basically this has happened in a number of countries the second point is really the involvement of the government I insist on the local authorities being the parliamentary, all the traditional chiefs they have that common interest and you've been seeing I think over the last week the quality of our leaders especially the ministers of agriculture how much they know how much they care about this new movement that has to happen in Africa the government should be really putting the frame in order to encourage these major projects to happen going towards this self-sufficiency the transfer technology really putting the frame to make it happen to make sure that we avoid these huge land grabs that have in a way advantages in some cases but most of the case are not done in a proper way that do not take until they account the importance of the welfare of the communities the DFI the donors, they want to support and the NGOs doing fantastic job but how to make sure that everybody aligns the interest for this project now the last point is really the private sector the last party to that I really consider that the private sector has to be the leading on this initiative and seeing it in the US which is really the land of the private sector in terms of Agri there are fantastic groups like the Cargills, the ADM very successful enterprises that and really I believe that it is around this private sector that has the interest to make it happen the private sector is investing because they believe that they will make money or harm in making money the private sector will be investing in Africa if they believe that there is a security for the investment and this will be based on good governance and transparency and that private sector also both local or international will have the appetite to go and invest in Africa if they control also the marketing of it and the Honorable Minister said it earlier it is very important to be able to market what you produce so I think things are happening everywhere you go you hear Africa and the next frontier is the success of Brazil we are going to see it happening the next years in Africa and it will be the one who will benefit are really the groups that will understand that and really place themselves now in Africa there are fantastic opportunities if I take the care of Mozambique with the water issues that we know are happening in the Middle East Middle East will come first to East Africa but I think that Middle East will get the commodities once East Africa has met fully their self-sufficiency then the breadbasket is enough for the rice to move into the Middle East so they have fantastic lives so I am very optimistic that things can happen but just to conclude I would say that the model really is large scale combined with out growers and putting in the central of it to make sure that the local communities can benefit another part of it large scale out growers and I think the last conclusion if I may is really I believe that the US who has always had that leadership on I agree can really should be the one still heading that initiative and I think what is just missing today is to really define various frames on the interactions between the large scale and the community if we have met that and really have put a nice frame clear comprehensive with all parties defining how should be the interaction between the large scale and the small holders then we'll get there and it's going to happen Thank you Jack, thank you very much I believe we should have about 20 minutes for questions I have so many but I think what I'd rather do is take them from the floor and I'll intersperse mine going through they're just the one thing as a question of being asked if would think through in responding that really has come out of the sort of research we've done in the partnership and that is I keep on this sort of vision thing if the governments the investors the civil society and the donors all look and say what are the cards we're holding in hand what is the comparative advantages these various places have let's maximize that value with a way that includes the people all in the area as Jack was saying the community otherwise so if we can just keep that in the back of our minds I'll take questions Steven, let me take a couple go ahead and announce who you are and what the question is Steve Landy, Manchester trade pretty quicky ones which I hope everybody else follows the example one at the end of the morning session somebody asked a question about agriculture in a goer and I would like to be very specific to say the one thing you can do in a goer to help Africa is get rid of the tariff rate quotas or get duty free treatment for the three or four products that are excluded I'm looking at the minister of agriculture for Mozambique of course and there's tobacco ground nuts the other quote is maybe we can make them a little bit bigger along the way and so on you add a little sweetener or a little milk to a cocoa you suddenly lose that value so that's just one question for attention second, again really quick continental, yes the U.S. is a continental market that's one reason why we're very successful there was a lot of movement going on in Africa in order to get regional communities the tripartite group in the east and echo watch in the rest and if they can get where they want to go with two or three exceptions we really will have two important areas I'm curious again in the agricultural minister's view whether or not they view regional integration as important or do they say no we have to do it nationally first and I'll just leave it there thank you there was a question back there I think that ends up thank you very much chair my name is Peter Wamboga Mugire from Uganda a journalist but also a policy advocate in the NGO world I'm part of a 14 member group of African journalists policy makers or government officials and community leaders who have been training at Oklahoma State University as food security fellows and we are very grateful to the State Department for that opportunity the members are here from Uganda and Kenya the countries I land they are also here from other state universities my question Mr. Chairman is to the minister's for how long will Africa rely on the hoe the hand hoe will the hand hoe help us to get out of the production and productivity levels that our countries require when the population growth rates are so high when you look at the demographics you see the population growing higher than food production the productivity levels of our land are going down and when you look at the forecast 50 years to come the population growth rate is so high reliance on the hoe and merely on the land without introduction of fertilizer is not going to deliver because from the food security trap I believe strongly that we need to work together through the public-private partnerships to have this happen I just want to know if there's any plans to see a shift from the hand hoe to another level thank you very much Mr. Chairman Thank you, Joshua and then back then then I'll take some answers I recall when Kenya was in testing out a warehouse receipt system first in maize and now apparently in other serials this was a few years ago and I think it was interrupted because of the food crisis and the government's sense that they had to intervene in maize trading to assure a sufficient supply but could you give us an update on where things stand in terms of the warehouse trading system I understand it worked quite well in its infancy a question back there and then I'll take answers we'll come back and we'll see how much time we have thank you I'm Alex from Kenya this can be answered by any member of the panel I wanted to know is corruption impunity a threat to food security in Africa if so to what extent and this is corruption a threat to the environment or private sector or collaborative and what's the future like if a threat to food security is their solution thank you thank you very much let me turn to panelists on those four questions now and one thing that strikes me is certain commonality aside from the corruption issue is on the production our experience agriculture requires size you have to scale up to be competitive the question is how do you scale up and still pull in the independent small farmers that themselves will be growing that I think is the most critical issue that ties into getting out of the hand hoe age etc that's my perspective could I go to the minister thank you let me answer the question on the hoe because the hand hoe is again part of what we talk about when we talk about women and agriculture I'm sure the gentleman from Uganda has been up at six o'clock in the morning and seen a lot of women digging with this hoe we are very aware of this and we have tried in Kenya first of all fertilizer and seed is not now a big issue but we have centers of equipment machinery which farmers can hire at low price they are not yet sufficient so we have some program which we have nearly concluded with Brazil and we have been talking to South Korea for a very long time and anyone who has been listening outside there knows that this is what we are trying to do to have centers of equipment which farmers do not need to buy they can hire out and with government support if you like our way of subsidizing so we are very sensitive to this I think our other colleagues may have the same but this is definitely quite advanced in Kenya now on the case that you asked Walters you said directly on warehousing receipt this is well underway if it stopped because of government trading I want to tell you that may have been the response to the farming in 008 009 we have had a farming this year I think more severe than before as you probably know out of this farming Kenya has acquired the third largest city called Daadap refugee center larger than Nairobi and Mombasa that's our third largest city that's 600,000 people originally built for 90,000 what happened this year is that government didn't get involved in trading of maize because last time it went terribly bad we have launched the system it has been very slow because the farmers themselves didn't I think again it's a question of advocacy and education the farmers themselves were suspicious because they want to deliver and be given the money right away this was not available so let me just assure you that we are working on it and it's still in progress it should still a few issues of transforming it we are not yet there but we are sensitive and working towards that thank you Minister Koske, Mr. Pacheco your perspective yes on the a go issue that Steve mentioned I fully agree that we do need from the county more efficient response to the growing capacity of Africa when we are emerging to reach the world food basket on the variety of products the procedure in place right now in fact are not easy to follow and with all the limitations the issue of how it's a matter of technology as my colleague mentioned that yes the short hand hoe is there we are busy on putting animal traction mechanization and even some other technology of zero tillage can facilitate a lot of what is going it's a matter of issue of transition some of the result you are hearing from back home they have a lot to do with the transition we are making to use the new technology the corruption issue in Mozambique we said the corruption exotic disease because when we were young it was not something familiar with it but some disease came from artists there we are fighting this disease so to go out from where it comes from thank you how can we in the private sector help get out of this hand hoe poverty trap and how much of this really is tied up into the scaling up and maybe you can also speak of the regional markets that were asked because as I've said before Nigeria does not need a regional market per se in and of itself is a market but also if you really want to scale up you really do need the regional market and that includes ability to move product internally so while Agoa and Steven is great I mean there's wonderful things but I've been thinking but if you ask me the sugar we'll be producing in Mali you can give us all the quotas you want the better value is in those internal market inside Yuma so you're never going to get it anyway Jack? I mean a number of products is absolutely essential we've been seeing sorry to come again on the example of rice but I think it's really the one that is probably the most interesting scaling up means being able to attract enough consignment to mill it properly to have a proper mill case of Nigeria you have a number of mills that are idle in Nigeria rice mills that are idle simply no material is coming there why? because you have to be able to attract the paddy itself so scaling up with a large scale will guarantee the minimum required quantity to be able to mill properly and then the idea is to be able to attract and offer good enough terms to the out growers for them to be willing either to sell or to use the facility to mill and then go themselves directly on the market or through the large scale so scaling up for me is absolutely crucial I mean I'm hearing all this dialogue which is very important to really assist the household and I think number of NGOs have been concentrating mostly on helping the farmers that it's absolutely important it has to be done more can be done they're doing a fantastic job but it has to be tied in into a larger value chain it has to scale up why is it not valid for us Africans and we've seen the business model in Brazil it's working very well maybe there are other issues but this is the way forward so I think I answer your question I just want to say one small word to the gentleman regarding corruption just to let me know I'm not a civil servant so I can maybe answer in a different way that question yes there has been there are different types of corruption there's the smaller corruption with the civil servant that inside the country is earning $200 a month he cannot sustain I mean he cannot make his family live so how does he do so let us not be candid he cannot sustain gradually as the country will develop it will reduce now regarding the other type of larger corruption and all this I think what is happening on the continent is absolutely fantastic I mean all this transparency governancy people have access to the media internet civil society coming in the people are more and more countable I mean what the people used to do 10 15 years ago it's not going to be accepted in the coming years so whatever you do in the coming years the people the international community will come after you and make sure so I think this is really a fantastic avenue for for Africa so I just wanted to answer to that question of corruption because it is true that it is something that might be preventing a number of large groups that want to come invest in agreek in Africa because they don't have real transparency saying okay how I'm going to be sure that I will not be taken down by somebody who wanted to bribe I'm not giving money or they drag me into something so so I think I'm very optimistic it's we're going on the right way. Thank you Jack you know unfortunately I think we can continue this discussion the minister particularly just said one one comment he wanted to add but I really will have to close up and turn over to Michelle to introduce our closing speaker you know this issue of again with corruption I could hold on a before I was before I was a public security but now I'm the minister of food security so I know very well how things work the issue of my colleague rose the issue of feasibility study you know the government the banks they ask for feasibility study when you want to produce food but they will never ask for the feasibility to study to develop the world start the war nobody have accountability of it another issue when there is a disease you may need to use the tetracycline to have infection if you have shortage of food you may get infection but the tetracycline will never work on the body on the system if may cycling meet cycling egg cycling he is not eating finally yesterday 16 of October world food day I would like to ask of you to thank you for the participation of having all the things coinciding on with the world food world food day maybe we should clap our hand for that thank you 16 of October 16 of October 16 of October 16 of October 16 of October 16 of October 16 of October so Michelle I think I turn over to introduce since Secretariat I don't know if it's Jose or Jose I think you've been taken over to the Jose side but I believe it's Jose Fernandez thank you very much I'm Michelle McNab from the partnership to Cut Hunger in Poverty in Africa and this has been the culmination of an amazing week I'd love I'd like to thank the five ministers of agriculture for joining us in the last week of farm visits And I asked the Minister Chenoweth from Liberia today how her weekend was, she said, what weekend. They didn't have much time to rest. They've been working day and night. This is their second event of the day, so thank you very much. I'd also like to recognize the African ambassadors who are here who have worked behind the scenes to make this all possible and to participate fully in the events. Thank you for CSIS for hosting today's venue. I'd especially like to thank the Department of State and USDA for sponsoring the Minister's visits and for arranging all the legwork that's happened over the past year to get us to this point. So nothing further to say except to introduce Jose Fernandez. Jose Fernandez, our Assistant Secretary of State. He's going to give us some remarks and then if we have time, hopefully take some questions. Mr Fernandez. Thank you. Good to be here again. Good to see some familiar faces. You can call me Jose. Just don't call me Mr Fernandez. I'm delighted to be here. I actually have the distinct honor of cutting short what I thought was a wonderful discussion and I apologize for that. I would have gladly yielded my time. I thought that was exactly the kind of discussion that we needed to have. I also would like to thank the Center for Strategic and International Studies for this entire event. I'm pleased to be here. I'm pleased to be here to provide final remarks on today's discussion. But more importantly than providing final remarks is really to try and have a continuation of the dialogue that we already had started in Iowa with a number of the esteemed colleagues in this room. We were together last week at the World Food Prize in Iowa and it was a beginning of what I thought a wonderful give and take with a number of our colleagues that we in the U.S. government would like to continue. In Iowa last week we saw technology and innovation that allowed a farmer to have an operation that was simultaneously profitable and sustainable. And we also learned about existing partnership between the private sector and GOs that allowed crops to be produced specifically to address African needs, crops like biofortified sorghum and improved maize for African soils. During the week that we spent in Iowa we had a very good roundtable discussion with the farmers and with several ministers. What we talked about the need to have access to technology to address the 70% increase that we've all heard about in food demand to feed an estimated 9 billion people by the year 2050. What's really alarming, at least to me, is that the production increase that we need in order to address this demand will require at least by, if you listen to some of the critics and some of the experts, will require at least 50% of an increase in agricultural investment in developing countries. And this is beyond the type of investment that you see in individual country budgets and the kind of official development assistance budgets that you've seen around the world. And so this is where I'd like to focus my remarks for the last couple of minutes on technology and on investment. You know, there are opportunities to expand and develop the use of new technologies that will improve farmer incomes and result in greater agricultural output. I'm talking about the range of technologies from the development of new drought and pest-resistant seeds through biotechnology to simple, yet simple innovative techniques. Techniques like hermetically sealed bags that can cut post-harvest losses. And in fact, at the last GOA meeting in Lusaka, we had a session on post-harvest technologies. And I don't think there's enough attention being devoted to post-harvest technologies. As you discussed during today's session, to move forward, private sector investment will be needed, will be critical at all levels of agriculture to improve food security, enhance access to markets for the poor, and create broad-based economic growth. But to encourage private sector investment, countries will need, as you've heard in the previous session, countries will need transparent, predictable, and efficient regulatory systems. They will need plant variety protection and patent protection of seeds. They will need to create an investment climate with policies based on science that will send an unequivocal signal to public and private sectors that governments are committed to leveraging the latest scientific innovations. And so we would urge government, not just in Africa but around the world, to make this a top priority so that plants will address the challenges outlined in your discussions today can move forward at the speed that Africa needs. Without such systems and without such policies, many African countries will miss out the opportunity that new technologies, technologies like biotechnology, have to offer, and as a result will be disadvantaged and non-competitive in crop productivity. For example, 29 countries around the world have allowed safe science-based systems for agricultural biotechnology. These are 29 countries in both developed and developing countries. And these kinds of developments have allowed benefits of about 65 billion dollars in economic gains over the last 15 years around the world. In Africa, we only have three countries that are taking advantage of technology. Egypt, Burkina Faso, and South Africa, although as a result of the leadership of Madame Koske in Kenya, Kenya is rapidly moving forward. As you work in CADEP and as you build a strategy for stronger public-private partnerships, and I heard a lot this morning about that and I agree that that's critically needed, I encourage you to think about investment and ensure policies that promote and enable innovation. This will provide a clear path to leveraging investment to encourage public-private partnerships and to the research and products that will help you move forward with all of your plans. And as you do that, I would encourage you to do what we started to do in Iowa, we've done in other meetings in the past, and that's to raise issues that you see as roadblocks or barriers to furthering investment within your own constituencies. As many of you know in this room, because you've participated, in the last year or so, we have been reaching out in our bureau to the African Diplomatic Corps in Washington through a series of three conferences that we've had so far in order to connect partners and agricultural biotechnology. The first meeting that we had was a government-to-government meeting on the benefits of biotechnology for African agriculture. The second meeting facilitated industry-to-government discussions to ensure that there were policies in place and that we talked about policies that would be needed in order to encourage investment. At the third meeting, we visited field trials and had frank discussions on the role that NGOs and universities could play in the adoption of biotechnology. We were very pleased by the results of those meetings. We were very pleased by the fact that at the first meeting we had maybe 15 to 20 ambassadors and by the second meeting we had almost twice as many. So I think that just having a dialogue is something that we felt was needed and actually would help to advance the ball. And we're going to put a lot more effort to build alliances to reinforce education and to build connections with the private sector as we go forward. Last week in Iowa, in discussions with Secretary Vilsack and U.S. government deputy coordinator for development for Feed the Future, Julie Howard, many of you in those meetings expressed an interest in moving ahead with the adoption of agricultural biotechnology. And as I said in Iowa and as we've said in the past, for those interested in moving forward, the State Department stands ready to be a bridge for building partnerships to help in what I consider to be the three areas where I believe we can actually add some value. Number one, on regulatory capacity building. Secondly, on trying to talk to companies in order to encourage private investment in agriculture in Africa. And thirdly, on public outreach. We look forward to working together. This is something that you will see our bureau continue to emphasize as we go forward. And I thank you again for the opportunity to close out the meetings today. Thank you. Assistant Secretary Fernandez has agreed to take a few questions. We have a few minutes left. If anyone would like to ask him a question. It was one in the center. Just wait for the microphone. Identify yourself please. Thank you very much. I'm Hassan Abdi from Kenya, a farmer. I wanted to ask the question first panel, but I'm happy that you have given me the chance. One area that has not been clearly mentioned on this, today's discussion, I don't know in Africa whether you have given an attention to global climate change, how it negates on the program or the project we are talking about. Then the other one is infrastructure. I happen to come from the opposite side of the coin of my minister's area. As she said, rightly I come from Northeastern, the most arid, the most arcele area. This is where I'm getting the pinch as far as infrastructure is concerned. The rest she has done is proud. What she has said is what is on the ground. We are embracing biotechnology. But here I don't know again what you are doing about politics. Whenever food is mentioned, politics is just pepping in. So I don't know whether you are addressing this issue. The other one is, which I felt was very important but not mentioned, is youth integration in the food production, the whole system. In our case, the Minister for Agriculture, whatever she is doing, I feel is being undermined in the Ministry of Education. Even the agriculture subject is almost being faced out from the curriculum. So how do we succeed if the youth that is coming up is not embracing agriculture? How can we effectively talk of food security? The other one is what we call in our area, often crops or high-value traditional crops. When you mentioned about nutrition, that is what came to my mind. This is the area we can exploit and advance and develop. These covers, the cassava, the sweet potato, all that, the watermelon and so forth. And this can be done under irrigation. In the asshole area, I wish, I have a request, a special request, that the asshole area, although it is called arid and it has droughts, today it is the flash floods that kills, tomorrow is the drought, the day after is conflict for resources because of the two phenomenon I've mentioned. And then the fourth time again is hunger and diseases. So what can we do in this area? We have 80% potential for agriculture. What we lack is water. How do we have service water? Thank you. I'm not sure if we have more questions because there were quite a few in that intervention to choose from, but let me see if there are any other questions before we turn it over. Here's one more question back here and then we'll let Secretary Fernandez respond. I am Mike from Uganda. Mr. Minister, I would like to know, to get an explanation on why Agoa is not working well. Thank you for the brief and clear question. You now have six to respond to. We'll take one more from Minister Pacheco up here in the front and then we'll let you respond. Well, I forgot to tell you that my language in official language is Portuguese. The reason we speak English, we become members of Commonwealth 84 and we are surrounded with English-speaking countries. We have no choice otherwise. I have no question. I was not appointed. I was not elected to say what I'm going to say, but on behalf of Afghan group I'd like to thank the government of the United States of America on behalf of Honorable Secretary of State José Fernandez to find this opportunity of dialogue, to share view, to share experiences and this for sure it will shorten the distance sometimes we have in communication between us. We are full support on finding more room like this taking place today and tomorrow and we are all invited to come to share with what is happening in our back home. Thank you. First of all, thank you very much. This is agriculture and issues with agriculture and issues of food security are critical to our administration and I think the only way we're going to move forward is through dialogue. If you've been following what we've been doing at the State Department, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, USAID and others, we need a dialogue. We need to be able to talk these issues through their political issues, their scientific issues, their issues of funding. So thank you so much for that comment. I'll take the harder question first, the AGOA question perhaps. I would disagree with you. I'm sure we can have a discussion, but I would disagree with you that AGOA is not working. I will agree with you that it's not perfect. I will agree with you that we can improve it. But if you look at the numbers on AGOA, even once you get outside of the petroleum imports, those imports from Africa have been growing. And I think the question for all of us is how do we improve it, not so much why isn't it working? On the previous questions on climate change, I think that point was well taken. One of the numbers that isn't discussed a lot when people talk about having to double food production by the year 2050 is that part of the reason we need to do that is that those in the know will tell you that we're looking at about 25% less land in the next 30 to 40 years. And a lot of that will be because of climate change. So the climate change problem exacerbates the reason why we're very much behind any efforts to try and improve productivity, try to improve agriculture in Africa. And infrastructure will be critical. There are plenty of examples, and if you look at our Feed the Future initiative, there are plenty of examples out there where production has taken place, has grown in a portion of a country, but that food hasn't been able to be transported to another part of the country. And so part of our Feed the Future initiative, part of our food security efforts are designed to improve the transportation to try and improve the infrastructure. And part of that isn't simply just getting the food from one place to the other, but also creating the infrastructure that's needed in order to have more efficient markets. If a farmer knows through a phone system, by a cell phone, that she can get more for her crops in another part of the country, that will spur trade in that part of the country. So we need to work on infrastructure, and if you read the Feed the Future initiative, we believe that transportation is a very important part of that. I won't get into the politics. On youth, the only thing I will say is that getting young people into farming is not simply an issue in your part of the world, but in Iowa, I was told, for example, that the average age of an Iowan farmer is 60 years of age. There are a number of reasons for that. One of them is the high cost of land and the fact that it's hard to get started in this kind of a business. So that's as much as I'll say on youth, but I do believe that it's an issue that needs to be dealt with when you talk about education in Africa. Thank you. Thank you very much for those answers to the questions and to everyone for participating. I know many of our ministers have flights today, so we'll let them go, but Johanna would like to... I just want to thank you all for joining us, and thank you so much to our distinguished speakers and panels today. Let you know that next Friday, October 28th, CSIS will be hosting an anniversary commemoration for USAID. We will have Administrator Shah and four other previous administrators talking about USAID and sort of what its future is going to be. Peter McPherson, Andrew Natsios, Henrietta Four, and I'm missing one. Brian Atwood I think is going to come in by video as well, so I hope you'll be able to join us, and thank you for coming today.