Peter Bazeley (see his presentation) started by noting that failure characterises the context on which to talk about agriculture reform processes in Africa and that a different paradigm is needed on how to reform agriculture in order to have a real impact on growth and livelihoods.

He identified three important contextual factors for analysing agricultural policy processes. The first of these is that there has been insufficient response in the agriculture sector (in terms of scope and scale) to technological change, institutional reforms (changing the rules of the game) and policy adjustments – he noted that the sector is not achieving what it has to achieve. The second factor is that there are two concurrent processes in the sector with regards to reform: aid effectiveness and modernisation of government agenda in donor countries, running parallel to a focus on policy and institutional reform as a means to achieve change. The third contextual factor is that agriculture, despite the rhetoric, is not doing well in terms of featuring large in PRSPs, or as a beneficiary of improved country-led programming under budgetary support, etc.

Although policy process was the focus of the talk, he noted that on the substance of policy few important things have happened since structural adjustment and liberalisation the Green Revolution, for example, which was supposed to be something applicable to Africa, has not happened in the continent.

Making reference to the work of the Imperial at Wye school (work by Dorward, Kydd and Poulton) Peter stressed the importance of the concept of development coordination. He noted it is not about multi-stakeholder coordination – between donors or coordinating projects or programmes across development partners and governments but about balancing and sequencing technical, market, institutional and policy fixes, recognising the multiple factors at play and the interlocking of local, national and international factors.

On the processes of agriculture policy reform, Peter remarked that we are still largely talking about Sector Wide Approaches (SWAps), despite what many have concluded about their poor performance in agriculture. He argued that the agriculture sector (as well as in other sectors) is still equated to a single (or more, in some countries) organisational structure (Ministry), despite the fact that required reform processes stretch well beyond those structures. The (bold) assumptions underlying the SWAp approach are that the Ministry of Agriculture has the mandate as far as agricultural sector reform is concerned, that sectoral reform processes are to be delegated to the sector technocrats and that this it puts boundaries around scope, scale and capacity. The fundamental problem, Peter noted, is that the debate and experiences have turned these approaches and instruments (such as SWAps) into ends in themselves the complexities of the mechanisms of putting them in practice and the long time horizons required to achieve change have distracted attention from the substance of reform (the actual objectives of reform). The targets used by government and the development community are typically much shorter-term and they do little to address longer-term reform processes.

Peter noted that he did not expect to be talking about SWAps in the middle of this decade, but that in Africa, both governments and donors are in practice saying that this is the way they want to go forward. SWAps in agriculture have not worked. Despite the years of intense activity and investments around SWAps, farmers have not yet seen tangible benefits from them. Sectoral programmes have tended to work better in other sectors, such as Health and Education. But in the agriculture sector, the approach is harder to apply ,not least because of the centrality, importance and size of the private sector, with which SWAps have failed to engage. He added that agricultural SWAps have largely failed to capture non-agricultural determinants of agriculture productivity and growth. This has led to enormous impatience and to the (probably wrong) conclusion that the problem was with the instrument’s design which led to multiple reorientations and re-starts, perpetuating the focus around process rather than substance.

Peter Bazeley argued that the determinants of agricultural livelihoods and growth often lie outside a ministry of agriculture’s scope of activity. He illustrated this by providing examples of what participatory poverty assessments (and similar exercises) identified as the determinants of agriculture productivity and growth, in three countries (Malawi, Mozambique and Uganda). Peter noted that only a few of these (such as production technology and information) fall within the mandate of ministries of agriculture that usually lead on agriculture sector reform. However, other issues such as security, justice, contract enforcement, transaction cost, etc. are key for the sector, but are not about the core business of ministries of agriculture.
What is needed, Peter suggested, is stronger development coordination, which implies a reconfiguration of large-scale high influence policy actions and investments across multiple spheres of public interest. There have been some attempts (although incomplete) of tackling the issue of cross-sectoral reconfiguration.

In Kenya, the Strategy for Revitalizing Agriculture (SRA) poses interesting challenges on how to achieve supra-ministerial coordination. But the process is still too new to comment on achievements.

An interesting example from Kenya comes though from the justice, law and order sector. The Governance, Justice, Law and Order Sector (GJLOS) programme emphasises innovative mechanisms of cross-sectoral coordination, and a strong move towards an effective sector-wide perspective. This provides example on how sector-specific issues are determined by other sectors’ problems/issues overcapacity of prisons, for example, is related to the capacity of the judiciary, which in turn is related to performance in public prosecution and in policing all of which are under different ministries and agencies of government. GJLOS thus constitutes a governance framework which could be a source of inspiration for the agriculture sector. For example, Thematic Groups have been created which advise cabinet level committees on how the government should allocate resources. The Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) is central to resource allocation decisions, on the basis of the thematic group analysis and proposals.

Peter argued how important the MTEF seems to be (or could be), and how agricultural sector specialists have ignored and not engaged with the process. He believes that the MTEF, as a supra-ministerial cross-government policy statement of medium-term priorities and accountable actions, could play a major role in determining supra-ministerial cross-sectoral strategies.

Peter Bazeley concluded his presentation by offering a few points for discussion: