Participants from Malawi and Mozambique during the PAA Workshop Photo credit: FAO Malawi

Between 5 and 8 June 2015, government and UN officials from Malawi and Mozambique came together as part of a three-day knowledge sharing workshop on the "Purchase from Africans for Africa" (PAA) programme. The workshop provided a platform for participants to deepen their knowledge and share important lessons to help design effective public policies addressing institutional markets and linkages to smallholder farming production in their countries.

As described by the FAO PAA Africa Coordinator, Israel Klug, during the workshop, the PAA Africa programme is based on three important pillars: (i) support to production and capacity building for farmers, (ii) local food procurement, providing easy and fair market access to farmers associations and (iii) support to schools under the schools meals programme. "Through these pillars, it seeks to integrate agriculture interventions with social protection initiatives, namely school feeding, focusing on encouraging the consumption of locally produced food, generating impacts on food and nutrition security of school children and building more resilient farming communities", Klug said.

The seminar was convened at the request of Malawi and Mozambique as a way to share and learn from their unique experiences with PAA Africa. The exchange demonstrates the countries' commitment to South-South collaboration, a development model for equal partners among the least developed countries of the global South. It has also the potential to strengthen African Union and (New Partnership for Africa's Development) NEPAD's regional efforts to foster action and learning by public institutions and non-state actors to end hunger in Africa by 2025.

After visiting two local primary schools and a farmers association, Edgar Cossa, Head of Department of Communications and Food Promotions at the Mozambican Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MASA), said "it will go a long way in improving the programme implementation in Mozambique". He cited budget allocation to local governments, involvement of the civil society and communities, introducing nutrition programme at the local level and ensuring sustainability of the project as some of the key take-aways that he would be bringing back with him to Mozambique.

Focus of the PAA Africa programme

A joint initiative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) with funding from the Brazilian government and the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the programme is implemented in close collaboration with national governments and civil society.

The Brazilian government and DFID have been working with FAO and WFP on the PAA Africa programme since 2012. Its creation was inspired by the successful Brazilian experience with the "Food Purchase Programme", which has been in place as part of Brazil´s Zero Hunger Strategy. PAA Africa is currently being implemented in five countries across Africa, namely Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger and Senegal.