Promoting regional trade in pulses in the Horn of Africa

Through the Malabo Declaration on “Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods”, African leaders strongly voiced their determination that Africa should be able to feed itself by 2025. This ambitious agenda, completely aligned with the SDGs, but even more ambitious for setting the goals five years before the SDG horizon of 2030, stresses the need to increase public and private investments in agriculture, necessary to boost production and productivity. But it also captures the importance of trade in achieving food and nutrition security on the continent. Tripling intra African agricultural trade is now much more central in the agricultural transformation agenda than it has been before. The focus on making diets also more nutritious and food systems more resilient to external (climate) shocks, ensures that Africa’s overarching policy framework for agricultural transformation and food security, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), is an inclusive and sustainable agenda for the future.