The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation Applauds the Role of Biovision Africa Trust and The African Union in Advancing Ecological Organic Agriculture in Africa

On Tuesday 14^th November, Ms. Stephanie Piers de Raveschoot, Programme Manager, co-focal point of the
thematic Network (Agriculture and Food Systems), Food Systems Section of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) paid a courtesy call to Biovision Africa Trust (BvAT). Since 2014, BvAT has been the Executing Agency of the SDC’s contribution support to the African Union-led Ecological Organic Agriculture (EOA) Initiative in nine African countries, namely Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Senegal, Mali, Benin and Nigeria, and host to the EOA-I’s Continental Secretariat. 

Stephanie made the visit to familiarize herself with the work of Biovision Africa Trust as strategic partner in supporting EOA and agroecology work in Africa. She was welcomed by the BvAT team – Dr. David Amudavi, Executive Director and Coordinator of the continental initiative, Ms. Venancia Wambua, the Senior Project Manager of the EOA Initiative and Mr. Alex Mutungi, the EOA Secretariat Coordinator. The visit also comes at a time when SDC is formulating a new global programme to support scale up of agroecology globally and in the Africa continent. The new programme, to go beyond Africa and include Southeast Asia, will focus more on supporting scale up of agroecology practices, youth entrepreneurship, policy dialogues on various levels from national to global, and investment financing in agroecology.

David made a brief presentation about BvAT’s history, governance and management, programmes, and its role as change agent in ecological organic agriculture and agroecology. He underscored the role of SDC in the development of the EOA sector in Africa and asserted that when history is written, this fact will be brought to bear. Venancia presented about the EOA-I’s design, implementation, and key achievements during the last two phases.

Alex presented key highlights of the Secretariat including some of the major advocacy activities undertaken to influence policy in support of EOA and farmer managed seed systems as some of the strategies to achieve food
security and sovereignty in Africa. During discussions on how SDC’s support has contributed to the growth of EOA-I, Stephanie affirmed SDC’s continued support to the AU led EOA Initiative and its Secretariat (BvAT) and underscored the pivotal role of BvAT as a key partner in the coordination of EOA/Agroecology implementation in Kenya and other African countries. She also applauded the role of the AU chaired Continental Steering Committee (CSC) as an example of a functioning multistakeholder platform and in providing oversight and guidance on the implementation of EOA in the continent. She commented the institutionalization of the EOA-I into the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) through development of EOA indicators and Farmer Managed Seed Systems indicators in the African Seed and Biotechnology Programme (ASBP). 

She further underscored the role of Regional Economic Communities (RECs) as key mainstreaming structures of EOA into Regional Agricultural Investment Plans (RAIPs) and called for efforts by AU to bring on board more mainstream donors and development partners to support the EOA Initiative.  Stephanie indicated that SDC looks forward to receiving BvAT’s suggestions on how the new SDC agroecology programme could support
a strategy of taking agroecology to scale and addressing the agenda of the AU’s EOA-I in Africa. She expressed confidence in the partnership between the two organizations. 

The meeting was held at the Kyaka Hotel in Machakos where BvAT is hosting a workshop on Value Chain and Markets Development (VCMD) for partners from Eastern Africa responsible for implementing activities under Pillar III by the same name. A similar workshop will be held for the West African partners in December. While speaking to the workshop participants, Stephanie underscored the need to catalyze consumption of organic food products as a key strategy to stimulate demand and subsequently adoption of ecological agriculture practices and production of organic food.

The BvAT team took Stephanie to visit an organic farm of Mr. Charles Mawia who also works as secondary school teacher in Machakos. The farmer has benefitted immensely from BvAT’s Farmer Communication Programme as evidenced by the exemplary work of agroecology in application – a diverse set of indigenous and exotic vegetables, fruits and keeping of small livestock that provide manure and biopesticides on his half acre farm. Stephanie and David planted organic orange seedlings at Charles’ farm to commemorate the visit. The field visit was organized by BvAT’s Field Officer for Machakos, Mr. John Mutisya who expressed satisfaction with Mr. Mawia’s work and looked forward to showing BvAT and partners how follower farmers have learnt from Mr. Mawia and are replicating his farm model.