1. News & events

PANAP organized a side event within the 5^th Agriculture Ministerial Conference, convened on 30th June 2023 at the FAO headquarters in Rome. It brought together around 400 participants in person, and over 800 people online, a total of 55 country delegations attended, with 27 represented at ministerial or vice-ministerial level from the African Union and European Union Member States as well as the, private sector and civil society.

In her opening remarks, H.E Amb. Josefa Sacko emphasised the need to renew commitment to advance agriculture transformation in Africa and Europe, through promoting sustainable investment in agri-food systems, boosting trade and integration, fostering science and innovation, and building climate resilient food systems Trade.

Commissioner Wojciechowski highlighted the tangible benefits that the Africa-Europe Rural Transformation action agenda has already brought to farmers and food supply chains in Africa through the establishment of the Pan African Network for Economic analysis of Policies, the agri-food business platform, and African-European Farmers' exchanges.

2. Spotlight

PANAP colleagues participated in the 7th African Conference of Agricultural Economists & 60th Annual AEASA Conference (18-21 September 2023, Durban, South Africa). They presented work on the impact of the African Continental FTA (AfCFTA) and subsidy policy in Senegal, organised a plenary session on “Evidence-based policy analysis in Africa” with high-level keynote speakers and an invited panel on “Fostering African food sovereignty in a world of uncertainties”, and sponsored the participation of young African researchers, organising two sessions on “Agroecology: potential for African farming system transformation” and “Sustainable agricultural practices and technologies”.

3. 2023 PANAP Virtual Meeting

On 14th December PANAP organised its annual virtual meeting to review the activities carried out in 2023, proposed future activities and topics to enhance exchanges, communication and capacity-building activities. PANAP will have to scale up its political visibility in 2024, constitute a central platform to enhance coordination among policy-related African activities, and continue working on key topics such as climate change, agroecology, sustainability and sustainable agriculture, food security, African regional integration, capacity development, youth and gender issues. PANAP has a key role to play in engaging with policymakers and making research output visible in relevant events that will take place next year in Africa.

4. Partners activities

Tanzania

University of Dodoma and the Sokoine University of Agriculture organised the restitution workshop in Dodoma (Tanzania) for the “Impact of the AfCFTA on the Tanzanian economy”. The workshop brought together policymakers and researchers to discuss the outcomes of the project's modelling activities. Highlighting the distributional issues raised by trade liberalisation, the workshop engaged with representatives of various Tanzanian ministries on solutions to mitigate the adverse effects on specific sectors of the economy. The event presented a new Social Accounting Matrix for Tanzania.

Senegal

On December 7th, a workshop took place in Dakar to present and validate the results of an ex-post evaluation of an agricultural input subsidy program in Senegal. The study was conducted by JRC in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture of Senegal - MAERSA, the Delegation of the European Union to Senegal and the ISRA-BAME (Institute for Agricultural Research of Senegal – Bureau for agricultural economics). The objective of the workshop was to present and discuss the first results obtained with local experts, stakeholders and policy-makers, to collect observations and comments on the results in order to ensure their consistency and discuss the program improvement options and recommendations with participants. The workshop and JRC’s presentations received lots of attention, notably on social media, since it is the first independent evaluation of a policy that represents 3% of public spending in Senegal, and given the importance of fertilizers on the African political agenda in the moment. This work showcases a good example of a co-construction of scientific evidences in order to provide policy-makers with sound evaluations

5. Recent publications

PANAP recently launched the JRC Working Papers on Economic Analysis of Policies in Africa to collect works supporting continental, regional and national policymakers in Africa in designing, assessing ex-ante and evaluating ex-post the impacts of policies. It also includes works on the construction and analysis of databases and model developments to provide evidence-based policy support to partner countries among others. The series serves the objective to share the knowledge produced within PANAP.

If you are interested in publish your work, please contact us: JRC-PANAP@ec.europa.eu

1. Economy-wide impacts of expansion of maritime trade efficiencies in Senegal - A recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium approach.
2. The Effects of Rising Prices on Maize Production in Western African Countries
3. Sustainable practices in cocoa production. The role of certification schemes and farmer cooperatives
4. Agro-economic determinants of violations of Protected Areas in Western Africa
5. Integrating the three sustainability dimensions: A Social Accounting Matrix approach for Cameroon.
6. Implications of Russia’s war against Ukraine for African economies: A CGE analysis for Ethiopia
7. Agricultural Commodities' Price Transmission from International to Local Markets in Developing Countries

For Further information

PANAP Secretariat

European Commission - Joint Research Centre

Email: JRC-PANAP@ec.europa.eu

Website: https://datam.jrc.ec.europa.eu/datam/area/PANAP

To know more about the PANAP newsletter access here.