Rwanda has uniquely maintained progress in implementing the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and meeting the Malabo declaration commitments, which aim to be fulfilled by 2025.
The Malabo declaration, adopted in June 2014 by African Union (AU) leaders in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, aims to accelerate agricultural development and secure food availability across Africa.
Upon adopting the declaration, African nations committed to seven key objectives, including increasing agricultural investment, with a target for governments to allocate 10 percent of their annual national budgets to agriculture from 2015 to 2025.
Additionally, the declaration includes goals to eliminate hunger in Africa by 2025, enhance intra-African trade in agricultural products and services, and reaffirm commitment to CAADP principles and values, among other goals.
The Malabo declaration was introduced as a reinforcement to the broader Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which was adopted in 2003 by African Union (AU) heads of state in Maputo, Mozambique.
Although 51 AU member states signed the declaration, reports indicate that the continent is largely falling behind in meeting the Malabo targets by 2025.
Process of implementation
Chantal Ingabire, the Director General of Planning in the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI), explained that Rwanda’s approach to implementing the CAADP began with adapting the continental objectives to fit the national context.
“Rwanda was the first country to sign onto the CAADP initiative in March 2007. Following this, CAADP principles were incorporated into our national agricultural policy framework, which was then aligned with Rwanda’s Vision 2020,” Ingabire noted.
To operationalize this, the Ministry of Agriculture developed Strategic Plans for Agriculture Transformation (PSTAs), which outline investment strategies for national agricultural policies and incorporate CAADP’s priority areas.
The implementation of these objectives began at both central and decentralized levels, with the government collaborating closely with non-governmental organizations and other development partners.
Monitoring Development
To monitor progress, the African Union heads of state created the CAADP Biennial Review (BR) to track, measure, and report on the implementation of the Malabo declaration by member states.
The first Biennial Review report was published in 2018, with subsequent reports released in 2020, 2022, and the most recent in March 2024.
Chantal Ingabire highlighted that Rwanda has excelled in all four reviews, consistently ranking as the top performer. The country’s scores across the reviews were 6.1 out of 10 in 2018, 7.24 in 2020, 7.43 in 2022, and 8.07 in 2024.
Ingabire noted that Rwanda was the only nation classified as “on-track” in the first three CAADP Biennial Reviews and received a golden award for its performance.
In the fourth CAADP Biennial Report, however, no country, including Rwanda, met the criteria to be considered “on-track,” although Rwanda continued to be the top performer.
The benchmarks for being “on-track” have become more stringent over time, reflecting increased expectations for agricultural progress. The latest review required a minimum score of 9.29 to be “on-track,” a threshold that none of the countries reached.
The recommendations for Rwanda from the CAADP reviews include intensifying measures to tackle malnutrition and stunting, enhancing the contribution of agriculture value added per arable land, increasing agricultural spending as a percentage of GDP, and improving agricultural financing.
Difficulties
Implementing the Malabo commitments has encountered several obstacles, with climate change being a significant challenge for Rwanda’s advancement.
Ingabire noted that climate change has adversely impacted productivity and food production. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted agricultural trade and investments, negatively affecting overall CAADP implementation across member states.
With less than a year remaining before the AU sets new targets, Bongiwe Njobe, Chairperson of the Forum for Agriculture Research in Africa (FARA), attributed the widespread implementation issues to inadequate policy frameworks.
“One of the main challenges we’ve observed is the lack of effective policy frameworks and clarity,” Njobe stated. She also mentioned that many countries struggled to adapt the continental targets to their local conditions, resulting in poor implementation.
As the Malabo declaration nears its end in 2025, the AU is developing the Post Malabo CAADP Agenda. This new framework is expected to uphold CAADP’s essential principles while adapting to new challenges, such as climate change.
