Continental Training on Malabo Declaration Biennial

Review Reporting Tools

15th to 19th March 2021, (from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm EAT each day) Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Concept Note

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Continental Training for 3rd Biennial Review (BR)

1. Background

African Governments adopted in 2014 the Malabo Declaration which constitutes a re- commitment to the CAADP principles and goals adopted earlier in 2003 through the Maputo Declaration. However, the Malabo Declaration reasserts a strong commitment to reach CAADP’s goals by identifying specific goals and targets to be achieved within a period of ten years, especially on enhancing investment finance in agriculture, poverty reduction, ending hunger, tripling intra-Africa trade in agricultural goods and services, and enhancing resilience of livelihoods and production systems, in order to ensure that agriculture contributes significantly to the poverty reduction.

More specifically, the Malabo Declaration introduced a commitment on the Mutual Accountability to the actions and results, which calls AU Members States to: (i) conduct a Biennial Agricultural Review Process that involves the tracking, monitoring and reporting on implementation progress; (ii) foster alignment, harmonization and coordination among multi- sectorial efforts and multi-institutional platforms for peer review, mutual learning and mutual accountability; and (iii) strengthen national and regional institutional capacities for knowledge and data generation and management that support evidence-based planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation at all levels (national, sub-regional and continental) for the expected growth and agricultural transformation in Africa.

Thus, in the framework of the implementation of agricultural transformation of Malabo Declaration in Africa, Africa Union Commission (AUC), the African Union Development Agency (AUDA)-NEPAD, as well as the Regional Economic Communities (RECs), and AU Members States (MS), in collaboration with development partners, established the CAADP Biennial Review (BR) process. The recent and the second of such report was adopted by the AU summit in February 2020. The conclusions and recommendations of the 2019 Biennial Review (BR) report allowed countries to review the progress made towards the fixed targets for 2025, in high level political dialogues, such as the Specialized Technical Committee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Water and Environment (STC-ARDWE), the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme Partnership Platform (CAADP-PP), and the Malabo Agricultural Policy Learning Event (MAPLE).

These meetings and events allowed all actors in general and particularly key actors of the BR process, to identify successes as well as the shortcomings noted during 2019 BR process in order to better prepare and improve the process of 3rd BR in 2021. In addition, the RECs, AUC and AUDA launched the consultative actions and the commitment of technical partners which resulted in a final set of 47 indicators classified into 24 performance categories under 7 performance areas (themes) to report on the Malabo Declaration of June 2014.

On 16th October 2020, the AUC held a virtual meeting of the BR Task Force to update the


members of the BR Task Force Working Groups composed of experts in 8 working groups. The members of the working groups contributed to a critical analysis in order to propose inputs for the update of the 3rd BR technical tools. The third BR data collection and reporting tools have been finalized with the support of a team of members of the BR Task Force and are ready to be disseminated to Member States through the continental training to start the process of developing the 3rd CAADP BR at regional and country level.

During the first technical coordination meeting with RECs, for the 3rd BR cycle, held virtually on 11th February 2021, the RECs raised important aspects for the AUC to consider to improve the entire coordination process of the 3rd BR. More specifically, bring needed support in terms of training on the BR process and related tools of data collection, including the use of e-BR platform, and countries needed a better understanding of some new indicators. In addition, it is important for AUC to provide continental trainings early enough in order to allow enough time for data collection, communication and validation, as well as the proposed contributions to improve technical documents of 3rd BR. Therefore, continental training has been preceded by Training of Trainers (TOTs) who will provide a support to the overall BR mechanism, and subsequently be deployed to train teams in Member States (MS), and support the MS to collect data.

The African Union Commission (AUC) has updated the list of experts in the Malabo thematic areas from different CAADP technical networks, including ReSAKSS and others, who were trained on updated technical documents (technical guide, template for country performance report and the e-BR system). AUC, AUDA and RECs conducted an intensive training of trainers from 24th to 26th February and 4th March 2021, in order to constitute the pool of experts who will provide technical support to the Member States during the data collection and validation, as well as reporting for the 3rd Biennial Review. The same group of experts may be deployed as needed to conduct an independent technical review of the National Agricultural Investment Plans (NAIPs) in the Malabo domestication process. In this spirit, the reporting tools in this area have been finalized and are ready to be popularized in the Member States through the organization of regional training.

In order to improve mastery of the 3rd BR technical tools and the understanding of new indicators by country level experts, AUC in collaboration with the RECs and AUDA-NEPAD are organizing this continental training of national experts for the 3rd BR process virtually from

15th to 19th March, 2021.

Objective of the continental training of national experts

Because of COVID-19, this continental training is being designed as a 5 days virtual training. The AUC will bring together AUDA, RECs, Member States, ReSAKSS, AKADEMIYA2063, AGRA, BR Task Force leaders, Technical Working Group leaders, experts and stakeholders, to:

  • Train national experts on updated physical and online technical tools for the 3rd Biennial Review of CAADP (technical guide, country performance report template and e-BR system);

  • Inform participants about the coordination mechanism and the final continental roadmap for the submission of the 3rd Biennial Report to the different high level political dialogues, and finally to the AU Assembly in January 2022;

  • Enable RECs and their Member States to draw their own roadmap in line with final continental roadmap


In addition, during the course of the training, the RECs will be invited to participate in the different training sessions of the national experts for the 3rd Biennial Review.

2. Expected results

The expected results of this meeting will be as follows:

  • Participants are informed about the 3rd CAADP Biennial Review

  • National experts are trained and familiarized with the content of physical and online technical documents (technical guide, country performance report template and e-BR system);

  • Participants including the RECs are sensitized on the coordination mechanism and the continental roadmap of the process of preparing the 3rd Biennial Report for submission to the AU Assembly in January 2022.

  • All RECs and their Member States draw their own BR roadmap in line with final continental BR roadmap


Training agenda: Training agenda presented in Annex 1

Expected participants: The Continental training of national experts will bring together about

200 national experts, AUC, AUDA-NEPAD and the 8 RECs. The full list of participants is presented in Annex 2

Language of training: English, French, with interpretation French - Arabic and interpretation

English - Portuguese

The continental training of national experts will be virtual. Because of COVID-19, per day this training is being designed spanning a total of 4 hours maximum from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm (EAT).

Work documents:

1. Technical guideline;

2. Country performance report template;

3. REC coordination mechanism and continental roadmap;

4. e-BR platform:

Organizer: African Union Commission

Contacts: African Union, in partnership with AUDA-NEPAD, AKADEMIYA2063, RESAKSS, and Policy LINK, are organizing this technical coordination meeting.

Organization of the meeting Names

Technical content team

  • Dr. Simplice Nouala

  • Komla Prosper Bissi

  • John Ulimwengu

  • Tsitsi Makombe

  • Agnès Akwang Lao Kenao Robert Ouma


Communication and logistics

  • Peace Mutuwa

  • Evelyn Nasimiyu Wechuli

  • Samrawit Gebrehiwot

  • Rashid Basso Sanfo

  • Producer of the training of

  • Policy Link support team

  • National experts meeting