ECOWAS meeting, February 2020

ECOWAS Consultative Meeting on Rice Offensive

(West Africa region’s Rice Development Strategy)

4 – 5 Feb, 2020

A. Background

In the past few months the CARD Secretariat has developed strategic partnership with the ECOWAS Commission in line with the resolution made in the 15^th Steering Committee meeting in Nairobi in June 2019. A part of this strategic partnership resulted in the request by the ECOWAS commissioner of Agriculture, Environment and Water Resources, to the CARD Secretariat to support in assessing the rice sector in the 14 ECOWAS Member States and to co-host this event. In response the CARD Secretariat deployed resources and its consultants to collect data for analysis which will now form the basis for the revision of the rice strategy, called Rice Offensive.

B. Objective and Results

As a part of the preparation of the ECOWAS consultative meeting, the CARD Secretariat carried out an analysis of the information contained in the various questionnaires, which were administered in the months of December 2019 and January 2020. This analysis made possible to draw up a summary report giving an overview of the rice value chain in the ECOWAS region. Based on this report, a presentation for the meeting was prepared. All these documents were shared with participants during the meeting.

The meeting was held in the ECOWAS parliament Abuja on 4th and 5th February, 2020 with all the NRDS Focal Points in attendance also in attendance were representatives from CARI, AGRA, AfricaRice, JICA, NEPAD/Grow Africa, IDH, Dalberg, ECDPM, RIFAN, ROPA, Intervalle and IFPRI.

C. Contents of 2-days ECOWAS meeting

Opening session

Opening remarks by CARI, CARD, and ECOWAS commissioner of agriculture. In their opening remarks CARI program director and CARD General Coordinator emphasized the timeliness of this meeting. Even though the West Africa region produces the largest quantity of rice in the continent yet she is the largest consumer, and this consumption is fuelled mainly by increase in population, urbanization and changes in consumer preference to rice due to ease of preparation. Dr, Yusuke Haneishi, CARD General Coordinator, first thanked Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for their financial and administrative contributions to enable the CARD Secretariat to co-host this important event with the ECOWAS Commission and CARI. He went further to list out the objectives of CARD phase I and II which are to double rice production in Africa by providing a platform for better information sharing and exchange, together with other functions like offering opportunities for capacity building for stakeholders along the rice value chain. In his welcome address the ECOWAS commissioner of agriculture reiterated the fact that rice sector development is at the centre of food policy in the sub-region. He pointed out that various programmes have been initiated by the various governments and development partners but that there is still great disparity between production and consumption. The question is whether the sub-region have the capacity to achieve the set objective of rice self-sufficiency by 2025. In order to achieve the set objective, he proposed the following pathways:

Restructuring of the local and regional markets
Tariff and non-tariff protection
Creating infrastructures to attract investments in rice development e.g. irrigation, transportation etc.

He concludes by saying that ECOWAS was ready to collaborate with all stakeholders to achieve the set objectives.The representative of the Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN), in his welcome remarks advised the ECOWAS to put in place favourable policies to support intra-regional trades.

Regional initiatives/Country presentations

A few regional initiatives and all the countries focal point presented their support to the rice sector and performance/achievements made in the 10 years of the implementation of the NRDS in their respective countries. Presentations were made by CARI and AfricaRice while ECDPM presented the result of their recently concluded studies in rice marketing in the ECOWAS region funded by USAID. The CARD Secretariat summed up the reports made by country representatives by presenting its findings from a regional perspective.

i) Competitive African Rice Initiative (CARI)

CARI is currently in her second phase. According to Dr. Jean Bernard Lalanne, the program director, the first phase covered four countries namely Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania and Burkina Faso. During the first phase, CARI trained 178,000 farmers on Good Agronomic Practices, and also trained 137,281 beneficiaries through farmers’ business school. It work based on the principle of matching funds where the farmer provides 70% and CARI 30%.

ii) AfricaRice

AfricaRice is working on its core mandate of research and development in the rice sector in Africa in order to attain self-sufficiency. According to Dr. Arouna Aminou of AfricaRice, special attention also needs to be paid to how to sustain the self-sufficiency level once attained. AfricaRice has developed varieties especially the NERICA series that have resulted in the uplift of 8 million farmers out of poverty. Moving forward AfricaRice proposed the followings;

Transforming the rice value chain through technology;
Focusing on development of the ARICA series which adapt well to climate change better than the NERICA series;
Continuous training on Good Agronomic Practices;
Development of the hybrid varieties.

iii) ECDPM

Dr. Ibrahima Hathie, ECDPM, indicated that most West African countries have applied a weak protection to their domestic markets vis-à-vis rice imports following the trade liberalisation in the 1990s. In 2015, ECOWAS set the common external tariff (CET) for rice at 10%, as its member states sought to ensure populations’ access to rice. Although member states add other taxes, varying from one country to another, total tariff protection is generally modest and not well targeted, and implementation modalities often reduce its effectiveness. He also pointed out that, in addition to low rate of CET, importers often receive tax exemptions. He also emphasized the fact that the cross-border value chains of locally produced rice was a reality, for example, a cross-border area between northern Benin, south western Niger and North western Nigeria. Finally he gives examples of cases and showed that there are examples of countries like Senegal which have put in place regulatory measures which give encouraging results.

iv) Grow Africa

During his presentation, the representative of Grow Africa gave examples of private sector involvement and indicated that they have done a study in some West African countries to see the business opportunities and that they are currently launching a project in some countries like Senegal, Mali, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana, etc.

Country presentations

All the focal points present made presentations detailing their country’s scorecard in rice development in the last 10 years. The outstanding point in all the presentations is the fact that except for Mali most of the countries are still far from attaining self-sufficiency, also except for Nigeria, importation by all the countries keep increasing over the last decade while all the countries are experiencing a hike in rice consumption.

In summing up the countries presentations, the CARD Secretariat, through its recently concluded NRDS progress stocktaking exercise for the ECOWAS countries, confirmed the countries’ position. However, as a way forward, the CARD Secretariat showed projections made by all the countries on the amount of rice to be produced by each country in order to attain the objective of rice self-sufficiency by 2025 in the ECOWAS sub-region.

Group working sessions

The participants were later divided into 3 groups for intense discussions on what needed to be done to attain the laid out objective by 2025, which culminated to the action plan presented in the next section.

Regional action plan

In conclusion, the recommendations were harmonized, agreed upon and grouped into six (6) strategic pillars to drive the implementation of the Regional Rice Offensive in the next five years (2020 -2025).

These pillars are:

Regulatory measures,
Finance and PPP mechanism,

iii. Knowledge sharing and management,

Trade and marketing,
Coordination of inter-professional organizations, and
Coordination of regional projects, programmes and initiatives.

The identified six (6) strategic pillars along with proposed activities that will facilitate regional value addition to country level rice sector development agenda are outlined as follows:

	Pillars	Proposed Regional Activities	Organizations
1	Regulatory measures	• Support the operationalization of Rice Policies and Strategies at the national level. • Support the implementation of Agricultural Input Regulations. • Promote Climate Smart Agricultural Practice (Resilient Varieties/Policy).	• Member States, ECOWAS • ECOWAS, CORAF & Partners • ECOWAS, Africa Rice, CORAF & Partners
2	Finance and PPP Mechanism	• Encouraging a more conductive investment environment by reducing taxes on agricultural inputs. • Promote successful subsidy models. • Advocate for Member States to learn successful model of financing the rice sector (e.g. the Nigerian Model). • Support the development of Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP’s) within the Rice Value Chain (RVC).	• ECOWAS and Partners, EBID, BOAD • ECOWAS and Partners • ECOWAS, Private Sector and Partners • ECOWAS Member States, and Partners
3	Knowledge Sharing and Management (including igitization)	• Promote and disseminate (e-learning, agric-digital, TOT, books etc.) success stories of research, innovation, technologies, and extension services.	• ECOWAS, Africa Rice, CARI, CARD, AGRA, and other Partners
4	Trade and Marketing	• Review the Common External Tariff (CET) on rice to the 35% band. • Harmonize safeguard measures (tariff non-tariff barriers etc.). • Support the definition of a sub-regional standardized quality for white rice. • Support the establishment of a sub-regional commodity exchange. • Promote Intraregional rice trade between different ECOWAS countries. • Support cross border cooperation on rice trading. • Promote trade norms and standards at regional and international levels.	• ECOWAS Parliament Farmers’ Organizations • ECOWAS Dept of Trade, Free Movement and Customs • ECOWAS Dept of Industry and Private sector • ECOWAS Private sector, Farmers’ Organizations • ECOWAS Member States • ECOWAS Member States Partners • ECOWAS
5	Coordination of the National Interprofessional Organizations	• Support the implementation of measures aimed at better involvement of the private sector. • Support the coordination of national inter-professional organizations. • Promote successful models for clustering of farmers. • Promote robust business plans. • Promote best practices.	• ECOWAS and Partners
6	Coordination of Regional Projects, Programmes and Initiatives	• Mapping of the Projects, Programmes, and Initiatives in the Rice Sector. • Organize regular meetings for coordination of the various ongoing projects.	• ECOWAS and Partners

Road map (Next steps)

At the end of the meeting the below road map was presented

The report of the meeting to be concluded by 20/02/2020
Review of the rice offensive with priority action plan- draft report to be ready by March 2020
Regional meeting for validation
Back to back meetings
Presentation to council of ministers by June or December 2020
Advocacy to continue with ECOWAS decision makers