African Grain Trade Summit concludes with clear commitments towards Structured Grain Trade in Africa
The 6th African Grain Trade Summit with a clear agenda for regional grain trade in Africa, and with renewed commitments for creating an enabling environment for structured trade concluded in Kigali, Rwanda.
The outcomes of the three-day summit reaffirms the regional grain sector actors’ commitment to structured grain trade in Africa and sets out a clear agenda on different priority areas to be achieved within the next two years, when the next summit will be held.
In a major push to create an enabling environment for the grain sector in Africa, H.E. Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda, pledged to continue to support the operationalisation of the single customs territory through the Northern and Central Corridor Initiatives. The President’s remarks were delivered on his behalf by the Right Honourable Prime Minister, Anastase Murekezi.
Over 200 delegates from 14 countries including Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Malawi, Zambia, Namibia, South Africa, The Netherlands, Singapore, USA and Philippines attended the summit.
The delegates, who represented the Government officials, private sector, traders, farmers, processors, financial institutions, civil society and development partners all committed to work together through Private-Public Partnership models to reduce the billions of dollars that get out of Africa through food imports.
In his remarks, the Hon. Kanimba, Minister of Trade and Industry, appreciated the Eastern Africa Grain Council (EAGC) for organising such a high-level summit, noting that, “the 6th African Grain Trade summit that we are hosting here in Kigali provides an opportunity to review our commitment to address the structural constraints of the grain trade on the African continent”.
He urged the delegates to create synergies and work together to create effective partnerships between the public and private sector to modernise the grain trading commodity value chain and to boost the intra-African grain trade.
Dr Bernard Otim, the chairperson of the EAGC, recognised the various challenges and bottleneck in the regional trade within the EAC but was confident that through this summit priorities would be identified and solutions provided for an efficient grain sector.
The summit ended with recommendations from the delegates who fronted for a private sector-led Action Group that would champion the identification of key issues and to drive policy engagement with governments to ensure the grain sector thrives. Regional harmonisation of trade policies among countries and among regional economic blocs was supported unanimously by the delegates.
The Eastern Africa Grain Council was tasked to drive the regional trade harmonisation agenda, including policies on Warehouse Receipting Systems, Post-harvest Management, storage systems and technologies that support regional trade.
The summit also brought together, for the very first time, the EAGC, the Southern Africa Grain Network and the West Africa Grain Network, where it was agreed on the need of collaboration on Marketing Information and Capacity Building. The delegates further agreed to the formation of the African Grain Council.
In addition, business to business linkages were made between the private sector, including traders, farmers and processors from the EAC, where trade contracts were sealed worth 10,290 Metric Tonnes of beans, 10,000 Metric Tonnes of maize, 10,000 Metric tonnes of rice and 47,000 Zero Fly bags. This is part of the trade facilitation initiatives EAGC provides to its members through regional networking.
“This summit has been successful given that all the objectives of the summit have been achieved”, noted Mr. Gerald Masila, the Executive Director, EAGC. He added that “clear commitments to create an enabling environments were agreed upon, trade contracts were signed worth millions of dollars, knowledge and lessons were shared among participants, and collaboration throughout the continent was achieved through the discussions with the East, West and Southern Africa region”.
The African Grain Trade Summit is a biennial, high-level, multi-stakeholder event organised by the Eastern Africa Grain Council with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development, through its project the East Africa Trade and Investment Hub, Food Trade Eastern and Southern Africa Organization, Government of Sweden through Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation.