President Special Panel on “Accelerating Implementation of the Bank’s Ten-Years Strategy with the High 5s Agenda” and on the ADF Policy lab

DATE: Tuesday 23 May 2017
TIME: 18:00– 20:00

SPEAKERS

• Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Chairperson, GAVI Alliance Board

PANELISTS

• Mr. Lars Thurnell, Chairman, Global Water Development  Partners
• Mr. Jay Ireland, President and CEO of General Electric, Africa
• Mr. Ismail Serageldin, Director, the Library of Alexandria
• Prof. Justin Yifu Lin, Honorary Dean and Professor, Peking University

MODERATOR

• Ms. Bronwyn Nielsen, Senior Anchor of CNBC Africa

SHORT VIDEO MESSAGE FROM

• Mr. Kofi Annan, co-Chair of the “AfDB Special Panel”
• Mr. Horst Kohler, co-Chair of the “AfDB Special Panel”

AM2017 - INDIA : Messages from Kofi Annan and Horst Kohler from AfDBGroup on Vimeo.

The global commitment of ending poverty and overcoming hunger and food insecurity permanently is very high in the current African and international development agenda as can be seen from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the African Union Agenda 2063. Africa has about 2/3 of all the arable land left in the world and is unable to feed herself. Consequently, the continent is spending around US$ 35 billion per year on food imports, putting additional strain on scarce foreign exchange reserves. Overcoming these challenges and pushing the new agenda for Africa’s development forward call for a structural transformation of African agriculture as highlighted by the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), and the June 2014 Malabo declaration.
A comprehensive and sustainable transformation of the agriculture sector in Africa towards a green agro-allied industrialization should happen over the next decade, if one is concerned with ensuring Africa feed itself, and contributes substantially to the achievement of the SDGs. In so doing, Africa needs to increase food production away from subsistence production and weak productivity by investing in technology and innovation. In addition to increasing food supplies, Africa needs to better manage and integrate the entire food chain from the farm to storage, transport, processing and marketing. Therefore, contributions from all stakeholders are required. For instance, while governments will provide adequate institutional and regulatory framework and a conducive business environment; the private sector will invest in competitive trade services, the provision of infrastructure and financing which will support: large-scale farmers in their marketing and export activities, and small-scale farmers not only to raise productivity but also enhance their resilience to the growing risks related to climate, market and political shocks.
To respond to this development mandate, new financing models are required. Indeed, in 2015, the African Development Bank defined its High 5 priorities for supporting African development, building on its existing Ten Year Strategy 2013-2022. The High 5s Agenda requires the Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) to significantly scale-up its activities by leveraging and crowding-in financial resources, moving from “billions” to “trillions” in profit and dividend-driven development investments. This Special Panel will therefore explore some of these financing modalities as they relate to achieving the continent’s agricultural transformation objective as articulated in the Feed Africa Strategy. Beyond financing, the panellists will discuss key ingredients of effective public-private partnership, how to engage key stakeholders such as the civil society, and the role of good economic and political governance in delivering development goals encapsulated in the High 5s. This event will be organized following a town hall (arena) setting style, starting with short videos from the two co-chairs of the Africa Progress Panel, Mr. Kofi A. Annan and Mr. Horst Kohler.