MAFAP starts a new 5-year phase of agrifood policy monitoring and reform prioritisation in Burkina Faso

The Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) team kicked off its new 5-year collaboration with the Government of Burkina Faso on 9 June 2022 during an official launch event in Ouagadougou, the country’s capital. 

Over the next 5 years, the MAFAP team, which has a Senior Policy Advisor based in Burkina Faso, will work with the government to improve the efficiency of its public policies on food and agriculture through support on policy monitoring and policy prioritization for a sector that represents around 20% of the West African country’s GDP.

In a holistic policy engagement approach, the high-level meeting was opened by the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Resources and Fisheries (MARAH) Permanent Secretary Mr Victor Bonogo and brought together representatives from FAO; Ministry of Economy, Finance and Growth; Ministry of Environment, Energy, Water and Sanitation; Ministry of Industrial Development, Trade, Artisans and SMEs; Ministry of Higher Education and Research and Development, and several government bodies such as the Agency for Export Promotion and the Institute for the Environment and Agricultural Research. 

Victor Bonogo, Permanent Secretary at MARAH, said: “To accelerate agro-pastoral growth, we need to implement well-designed programmes and address the problems identified through tangible evidence. That’s why the government is  pleased to have the new phase of the MAFAP programme in our country”.

During the event, MAFAP team presented the programme to officials and outlined the core activities in the form of economic analyses on public expenditure on food and agriculture and on price incentives for some agricultural commodities (cotton, cattle, maize, sesame and sorghum).

A further analysis, based on the 13 pressing policy issues that were identified by stakeholders in the meeting, will be carried out to identify the best, high-return reforms for the Government of Burkina to consider, in line with the country’s agricultural development agenda and wider socio-economic growth.

MAFAP Manager Christian Derlagen said, “Today, more than ever, it’s essential to help countries to better use the resources they have and to reform their food and agricultural policies. Commenting on activities, he added: These analyses will allow the Government of Burkina Faso to see bottlenecks and unblock them, guide future investments, and reform public policy to benefit people and farmers especially”.

Follow the meeting, the MAFAP team held two full-day training workshops to present the MAFAP methodologies for the analyses on public expenditure and price incentives, as a capacity building and upskilling session.  Over the next few months, the MAFAP team will now hold bilateral follow-up meetings to narrow the policy issues down from 13, to tackle the most pressing and rewarding policy interventions first in terms of growth, employment, and food security and nutrition.

• Read the press release here (in French). See photos of the launch here and here.
• Read more about MAFAP (in French) here.