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After two decades of declining per capita incomes, Africa is turning the page and has achieved remarkable economic and agricultural recovery during the past 10 years—the continent's longest period of sustained positive per capita income growth since the 1960s. The recovery process, which started in the late 1990s, has led to average GDP growth rates of 6 percent per year, agricultural growth rates of 4-5 percent, and steadily increasing per capita food production. The recovery is also spreading across the continent; today, 70 percent of Africa's population has lived in countries that have had positive per capita income growth in the past decade. It is worth noting that during the Green Revolution, India experienced agricultural growth rates of 6 percent, which are very similar to the growth rates that a growing number of African countries are achieving today.

However, while average poverty levels among African countries have declined steadily since the middle of the 1990s, they have not declined quickly enough. In fact, the rate at which poverty is being reduced is well below what is required to meet the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG 1) of halving the proportion of poor and hungry people by 2015. Across Africa, average poverty levels have decreased by only about 6 percent during the past 10 years. If the continent is to achieve MDG 1, it must not only sustain the recovery process in the medium to longer term, but accelerate it over the next few decades. To do this, a real transformation of the agricultural sector is essential, and that requires placing agriculture high on the policy agenda.

African governments are doing just that through the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), an initiative by the African Union under the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). CAADP's main goal is to help African countries reach a higher path of economic growth through agriculture-led development, which eliminates hunger, reduces poverty and food insecurity, and enables expansion of exports. It is a common framework to (1) guide country strategies and investment programs, (2) allow regional peer learning and review, and (3) facilitate greater alignment and harmonization of development efforts. CAADP is laying the groundwork to scale up investment in agriculture and improve sector governance through evidence- and outcome-based planning and implementation. Under the initiative, African heads of state have committed to spending at least 10 percent of national budgets on agriculture.

Because national governments have made strong financial and political commitments through CAADP, and because the initiative has adopted stringent mutual accounting and review processes, it offers a real opportunity to once again reverse the recent decline in overall official development assistance for the agricultural sector. CAADP has featured in all G8 summits since 2004 and is expected to do so at the upcoming Hokkaido meeting in July. Furthermore, a growing number of bilateral and multilateral development partners are seeking to align their assistance strategies and their activities in the sector with CAADP priorities and targets; the World Bank and other development partners, for example, have recently established a CAADP Multidonor Trust Fund (CMDTF) to raise the level of available resources and scale up support in anticipation of the acceleration of the pace of the implementation process.

IFPRI also supports the CAADP agenda and is working at the regional and national levels with the NEPAD Secretariat and with regional economic communities in Africa. It is providing assistance through research, capacity building, and communication to (1) raise the quality of program planning, (2) develop knowledge systems to inform, guide, and track the implementation process, and (3) facilitate coordination and outreach activities. At the country level, IFPRI is working with local experts to take stock of country efforts to achieve the CAADP target of 6 percent annual growth rate for agriculture and to identify long-term options for growth, poverty reduction, and food and nutrition security.

Because the CAADP agenda reflects a declared commitment by African countries to promote an agriculture-led growth strategy to achieve MDG 1, it has without doubt contributed to the re-emergence and increasing prominence of agriculture on the development agenda. Because CAADP is fully owned and led by African governments and stakeholders, has generated strong commitments by national governments, and has incorporated stringent accountability and review practices, the credibility of the agenda has risen to a level unprecedented in the history of development dialogue, partnership, and practice in Africa.

Ousmane Badiane is a senior research fellow and Africa coordinator at IFPRI.