“Local Ownership” as a Key Element of Better Governance

IFPRI Conference on Assuring Food and Nutrition Security in Africa by 2020
Session on Implementing Action in key Areas: Strengthening Governance
Kampala, Uganda, 1-3 april 2004
by Mr. David King, Secretary General of the IFAP


For those colleagues who are unfamiliar with our federation, IFAP is a world farmers’ organisation. It has in membership 100 national organisations of family farmers from 70 countries, and represents over 500 million farmers. For the farmers that we represent, there is no doubt that “strengthening governance” is an important area for action if nutrition and food security is to be achieved in Africa by 2020.

Most discussions on ‘good governance’ seem to focus on human rights or corruption issues in the public sector and corporate responsibility in the private sector. Such governance issues are obviously important. However, there is another governance issue that is essential to farmers, and which deserves more attention. This is “local ownership of development programs”.

Local ownership of the development process requires cooperation on policy-making among governments, the private sector and farmers’ organisations, within a particular country. It is achieved through institutionalised consultative processes. Such consultative processes help to ensure that development programs reflect national priorities, rather than the priorities of the donors or personal interests. Consultative processes also provide a sound basis for combining the energies of all actors, and hence achieving a sustainable path for development.

Experience shows that in the countries where nutrition and food security has been achieved there are strong farmers’ organisations working as a partner with government, mobilising the energies of thousands of farmers in rural communities.

“Bad governance” is often used as a reason by industrialised countries for not investing adequate resources in agriculture in Africa. Yet Africa cannot generate enough wealth and savings to escape from poverty and hunger by itself. So what good governance guarantees can Africa give to investors and donors?

When African leaders agreed to NEPAD in Genoa in 2001, they committed their governments to consolidate democracy, to follow sound economic management practises, and to promote peace, security and people-centred development. The will to do better seems to be there, but the means that are lacking.

IFAP hopes that this conference will support the concept of ‘people-centred development’ and ‘local ownership’, and make the strengthening of farmers’ organisations, and involving them as partners in development efforts, a cornerstone of implementing actions for better governance for achieving nutrition and food security in Africa. Unless development efforts are focused on people and their organisations, the poor will remain politically powerless and economically disadvantaged.

Farmers’ organisations in Africa should be strengthened so that they are capable of doing analysis of agricultural policy issues, of drawing up position papers to input into the development of government strategies, capable of relaying farmers’ interests in all debates and programs, and capable of strengthening the position of farmers in the market. Capacity-building is important if participation is to be meaningful.

There are two sorts of ‘bad governance’ behaviour commonly encountered by farmers’ organisations. These are: “false participation” and “whitewash participation”.

“False participation” occurs when governments are of the opinion that it is enough to open the door to consultation and leave it up to the farmers’ organisations to see how they can fit in. If governments really value the contribution of farmers, then the Policy and Planning Units (PPUs) that exist in most ministries must organise briefing sessions with farmers’ organisations, before they meet officially with Ministers or the President. Further, it is not enough for farmers’ organisations to be only involved in the formulation of policies; they must also be involved in implementation and monitoring. For example, many PRSPs have limited impact on the ground since there are inadequate programs through which these can be translated into reality.

“Whitewash participation” occurs when farmers’ organisations are involved in working with government on policy issues, and then their views are ignored. For example, farmers’ organisations can work hard to negotiate a draft agreement with governments on development programs, only to find that the text that is finally approved is totally different. This too is ‘bad governance’.

Farmers’ organisations can be valuable partners to governments in reaching down to their grass-root farmer members in the villages to make sure that their needs are taken into account in the design, implementation and evaluation of policies and programs. Farmers’ organisations can also be a force for peace and stability in a world of globalisation and increased competition. The pure market system is meant to exclude the weak and inefficient; that is how it functions. Only the best survive. There is, however, a high social cost to this system, especially in Africa where 60 per cent of the population is young people, and a huge number of them are unemployed. Group structures, like farmers’ associations and farmer cooperatives, can be a force for social cohesion and empowerment and so contribute to political stability. In regions of conflict, dialogue is often easier among farmers’ organisations than among governments. Within IFAP, we have held very constructive meetings between Turkish and Greek Cypriot farmers in the UN buffer zone in Cyprus, and meetings among farmers in the Middle-East in Jerusalem. Such civil society cooperation helps to increase understanding of each other’s situation and builds bridges for cooperation. Political leaders should support, not prevent, such contacts.

“Better governance” also applies to donors and international organisations. Donors need to better coordinate their actions on the ground. It is a drain on the scarce resources of African governments to be swamped by reporting procedures and visits of numerous development agencies. However good governance requires more than donor coordination. It requires donor coordination around programs developed by African leaders themselves. It is not helpful when donors come in with their own programs and interfere with the efforts of local people. That is “bad governance”. For example, donors and international institutions have often come to Africa with proposals for “market and trade reform”. In a continent of 600 million people, of which 450 million are subsistence farmers who are not in the market economy, who work with hand tools, who have no money to buy fertiliser and who have no roads, advice on market reform is not the first sort of help they are looking for.

In our view, too much attention is place on the production of export crops at the expense of improving nutrition of local populations. Hunger has increased in Africa over the last five years. Yet 90 per cent of the headlines in the media and at international conferences are focused on the 10 per cent of agricultural production that enters international trade.

In conclusion, better governance is a necessary condition for achieving nutrition and food security goals in Africa, but this must include setting up effective consultative processes that combine the strengths of governments, private sector, NGOs and farmers’ organisations, with clear rights and responsibilities for each partner.