CEDRES’ international colloquium on December 6-8, 2010 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

The Future Agricultures Consortium is co-sponsoring an international scientific symposium on ‘What Agriculture for Sustainable Development in Africa?’ in Ouagadoudou, Burkina Faso, on 06-08 December 2010. The event will be hosted by our partner the Centre of Study, Documentation and Economic and Social Research (CEDRES) and feature sessions on agricultural policy, research policy, finance, markets, methodologies and models. The symposium will bring together Anglophone and francophone researchers and policy makers from across the continent. As agriculture in Africa receives increasing attention from national governments, regional agencies, international donors and the private sector, critical reflection on alternative pathways to more sustainable food futures is particularly timely.

FAC established a partnership with CEDRES in early 2010 which began with the launch of two policy-relevant research projects. First, a transect study across Ghana and Burkina Faso, led by Prof. Taladidia Thambiano (CEDRES Director) and Dr Gountiéni Damien Lankoandé, is analysing the role of innovation and coordination – and the policies processes underpinning them – to explain differential agricultural performance.

A second study led by Dr Lankoandé under the FAC Social Protection and Growth theme is examining a number of ‘heifer-in-trust’ type projects to assess how initiatives that seek to build the productive assets of poor people through the distribution of breeding livestock can support ‘graduation’ out of social protection programmes. Initial results from both studies will be presented at the CEDRES symposium, with final reports and policy briefs available from the Future Agricultures website in 2011.

Background to Conference

The African Union summit held in Maputo, Mozambique, in 2003 adopted two key resolutions to facilitate the achievement of the Detailed Program of Agricultural Development in Africa (PDDAA), one of the Millennium Devel-opment Goals.These resolutions aimed to engage and commit heads of states and governments and development partners to ensure that at least 10% of the public annual budget is allocated to agriculture and at least 6% growth be achieved in the agriculture sector in African countries.

What will be retained here is that, at the initiative of programs, projects, research and international forums like that Summit, important financial, material and human resources are engaged for the agricultural sector. However, if it is true that we must invest in this sector, it seems, as per mixed results registered compare with the resources invested since the independ-ences, questioning the current agricultural system itself is crucial. Unfortunately, many reflections related to the subject were often limited to funding and equipments issues.

Therefore, in the light of repeated food crisis, rural poverty stagnation, food insecurity and we can go on; it is more that neces-sary to rethink African agriculture holistically.