AFRICAN COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY: A mechanism for agricultural growth, food self-sufficiency and ecological transition.

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Over and above all the constraints and mechanisms for allocating budgets to the various policies, the AU budget should traditionally devote more than 30% (as opposed to only 10% at present) to the introduction and implementation of a common agricultural policy, with an annual growth rate of 1% each year, and the same amount to inclusive cohesion policies, with a strong emphasis on actions to adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change on regional and social inequalities.

The combination of regional security crises at global level, health crises, economic, environmental and climatic crises, combined with the sharp rise in African urbanisation, is increasing poverty and food insecurity on the African continent and in the countries of the South in general, revealing the structural weaknesses of the production system in most of these states, but also of sectoral empowerment policies, marked by a high index of food price vulnerability in each of these countries.

Today, comments on the decline in the active agricultural population, the contrast between the potential of arable land and cultivated land, the potential for irrigation and the potential for irrigated land in Africa are the subject of debate, with the problem of climate change coming up against them.

The question is: Do we need to address these issues, if we are to see an increase in agricultural yields and hence in food problems in the South and in Africa?

Sustained growth in African agricultural production will require root and branch reform of a number of sectoral cooperation mechanisms, such as the Common Agricultural Policies. Indeed, to talk of inclusion and African integration, it is first necessary to abolish the existing micro-systems such as UEMOA, CEMAC, COMESA, etc. and make way for a single entity, the AU, which will have to take charge of all policies, taking into account each of the cultural and historical specificities of the continent's blocs.

????????In fact, the existence of subregional formalism will be an obstacle to the emergence of projects such as the AU passport, free trade and the emergence of a strong agricultural policy in line with the PDDA and NEPAD, the single African sky, etc, because if we are currently talking about food vulnerability even for countries whose agricultural production seems considerable, such as Cameroon, this is due to the fact that most of the country's production is exported to neighbouring countries whose high solvency and agricultural deficit offer competitive selling prices, resulting in the quasi-export not only of the best quality agricultural products but also of most of them.

Effective structural changes would lead farmers to adopt the most remunerative specialised production systems, given the level of productivity driven by technical progress and high-yield ecological farming practices, and the agricultural price ratios determined by a common African agricultural policy.

A common African agricultural policy In view of the specific political context prevailing on the continent, with a strong increase in patriotism in production and consumption, it is urgent, for both humanitarian and ecological reasons, to abandon the sub-regional approach of the CAPs in favour of a single African approach.

This would mean relinquishing sovereignty in a sensitive area, since it is intimately linked to the supply of food to populations, and would also mean reconciling highly divergent national policies, with a clear division of tasks between the continental and national levels whose vision is based on this common policy, the main objective of which is to ensure that Africa is self-sufficient in food, in other words, independent of the rest of the world.

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Difficulties :

Economic

- Lowest standard of living in the world

- Largest number of malnourished people in proportion to total world population.

- Rural exodus caused by food insecurity and poverty in the countryside, coupled with political crises and the corruption of internal and external elites among rural populations.

- The absence of a resilient city marked by a non-dynamic industrial sector.

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Undisciplined payment of compulsory state contributions,

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Recourse to international aid for certain regional projects,

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External influence and pressure on most regional integration projects,

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Lack of strategic vision and clear political priorities at national level,

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The multiplicity of regional groupings, sometimes with diverse or even contradictory objectives,

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The carbonisation of African economies (agriculture provides 70% of all jobs in some countries, often generates the bulk of GDP, and represents the continent's main source of foreign currency, around 40% according to the FAO, Agriculture has long been neglected as a public policy issue, and even when it is taken into account, it is for agricultural products that require prior processing before consumption, and for which the continent has almost no processing techniques and processes, to the detriment of agricultural needs for direct consumption (this has been accentuated by the emergence of foreign companies with carbon connotations),

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An accumulation of texts and national agricultural programmes that have not been implemented.

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It would be important for the African Common Agricultural Policy project to focus initially on building the internal market. A system guaranteeing prices and the sale or even storage of production, associated with a system of variable levies at the borders, protecting African production from competition, but this requires the development of all the inputs in the agricultural chain, but particularly the ecological fertiliser sector.

In short, a protectionist and incentive-based policy.