Botswana Lives By AU's Malabo Declaration
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Monday August 17, 2020 17:06
Dikoloti was responding to a question from Member of Parliament for Jwaneng-Mabutsane, Mephato Reatile who had asked the Minister when government would sign the Malabo Declaration.
The Declaration is a set of concrete agriculture goals to be attained by 2025 that was adopted at the African Union (AU) Summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea in June 2014 by Heads of State and Government.
It recognises the importance of multi-sectoral engagement and co-ownership of this agricultural transformation agenda.
Equally, it involves the public sector, including infrastructure, energy, trade, industry, health, science and technology, education, and the importance of putting in place a coherent inter-sectoral coordination of efforts in initiatives for optimising resource use, synergy and maximising outcome and impact.
“Botswana as a member of the AU is already party to the Malabo Declaration. As you may recall that while the Maputo-CAADP era was still about setting up the architecture of the process and its milestones (compact, NAIP, business meeting), the Malabo-CAADP era now builds on that foundation and ensures that it delivers against Malabo targets as well as against the other national development targets,” Dikoloti said in response. The Minister added Botswana was part of the June 2014 Summit in Equatorial Guinea where the AU adopted this milestone.
By their nature, he said declarations are not signed, as they are not agreements but political statements of intent.
Dikoloti said to ensure that the emphasis on delivery does not remain an empty promise, Heads of State have agreed to a Biennial Review, at which progress of each individual country is measured in alternating years and against all that the Malabo Declaration is committed to achieve.
Dikoloti added his Ministry as a host of this process has held multi-sectoral workshops for both the first and second Biennial Reviews.
It was one of the 47 of the 55 AU member states that had provided information on their status for the first report.
The Minister said a total of 43 indicators from different sectors that have an impact on agriculture development for example health, water, rural development, trade, poverty eradication, meteorology, energy, education to mention amongst others were tracked along the seven thematic areas of the Malabo Declaration.
“Selected indicators were then summarised in an innovative tool called the ‘Africa Agricultural Transformation Scorecard (AATS)’ in order to assess each country’s performance,” he said.
The AATS highlights each country’s five best and worst indicators and provides specific policy recommendations based on the country’s performance.