Guinea-Bissau, February 2023
Second Working Week for revising NRDS (National Rice Development Strategy) in Guinea Bissau
Background
In Guinea-Bissau, rice is an important crop for food and nutrition security with the potential for income generation for producers and other stakeholders in the value chain. However, in recent decades, national production has not been able to meet increasing demand due to rapid population growth, urbanization, and changing consumer preferences. Annual consumption is approximately 318,148 tons against national production of 118,885 tons, forcing the country to rely on imports of 188,174 tons to cover the deficit estimated at US$74 million per year.
Guinea-Bissau joined CARD from the second phase. Before being a member of the CARD initiative, Guinea-Bissau had been supported by FAO to develop an initial rice development strategy (2015-2025). However, the document produced was not fully implemented for various reasons.
Furthermore, it was not aligned with the new timeline of the expanded period of CARD (Phase II:2019-2030). In this context, the NRDS Task Force requested CARD Secretariat to support the organization of working weeks to revise their existing NRDS.
The first working week was held in September 2019. Interrupted by the pandemic of COVID-19, the second working week was organized from 13th to 17th February 2023, at NINA Hotel in Dakar, Senegal.
Methodology
The workshop was chaired by the Director General for Agricultural Planning and was attended by 9 participants from the public and private sectors namely, the General Directorate for Agricultural Planning, Research Institute, the Rice Producers’ Organization, and the National Farmers’ Association of Guinea-Bissau.
Following opening remarks from the Director General of Agriculture Planning, the NRDS Focal Point person presented the welcoming remarks. After the opening ceremony, the Regional Consultant refreshed the participants about the template emerging from the 13th CARD Steering Committee meeting for the development of NRDS for CARD Phase II. The revision of NRDS was done by the discussion chapter by chapter in plenary followed by four breakout groups to update specific issues. Some data could have changed since 2019 when the document under revision was elaborated and therefore needed to be reviewed.
Key Outputs/Results
During the working week, NRDS Task Force diagnosed the current situation of rice sector in Guinea-Bissau, carried out a projection for 2030, and defined a strategy to achieve the quantitative objectives and the guidelines for its implementation.
The participants discussed and adopted the vision, mission, and objectives to be pursued in the implementation of NRDS II. These include the implementation of the strategy in two phases. The first phase, scheduled for 2022-2025, consists of consolidating the achievements of the rice sector and implementing measures to put the country on the path to self-sufficiency in rice. Specifically, the objective will be to halve the rice trade deficit by supporting the increase in local rice production on 144,106 ha (26% in mangroves, 65% in lowlands, and 8% in irrigation) whose production is estimated at 292,008 tons of paddy rice or 188,663 tons of milled rice, which corresponds to a reduction in the deficit from the current 48.43 % in 2022 to 36.27% in 2025. In the second phase (2026 to 2030), the objective is to eliminate the rice deficit through local production by increasing the area to 251,957 ha (24% in mangroves, 46% in lowlands, and 29% in irrigation). Production is estimated at 850,521 tons of paddy rice or 545,517 tons of milled rice equivalent to a surplus of around 47,000 tons of milled rice.
However, the participants acknowledged that achieving self-sufficiency in rice production to meet the consumption requirements by 2030 may be too ambitious but they agreed that if investments with necessary infrastructures, equipment services, and human capital are put in place, the target of self-sufficiency in rice can be achieved in 2030.
Way forward
The document produced in this working week will be shared with all stakeholders for their comments and observations in order to have the first draft of the NRDS II.
Participants in the workshop
