Strategy for agricultural transformation in africa

 

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38 
5.
RISKS AND MITIGATIONS
Risk 
Mitigation Strategy 
1.
 
Insufficient funding 
for transformation 
Because the ATA requires a large investment for transformation, 
it is important that the private sector is properly incentivized to 
participate. Thus, the ATA will position agriculture as a business 
and focus on the creation of competitive returns – through 
innovative blended finance structures, financial sector 
development, and other efforts. Creating attractive investment 
opportunities will allow it to target a variety of pools of capital, 
including: multi-lateral development banks and bi-laterals; 
governments and Central Banks; foundations & donors; 
commercial lenders; private equity venture capital firms; 
sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and other sources of 
institutional capital 
2.
 
Lack of political 
will from RMCs to 
undertake the 
reforms necessary 
to drive 
transformation 
It is impossible for the Bank to guarantee political will on the part 
of RMCs over a ten year horizon to drive transformation.
However, it is recognized that a lack of political will is a critical 
risk factor (and typically a major driver of failure of past attempts 
for transformation) and therefore, his risk must be maximally 
mitigated in the construction of the strategy and implementation 
plan. 
It is notable that the current President of the African 
Development Bank was formerly in the role of the key 
stakeholders that the Bank will need to engage with to drive, from 
a government perspective, transformation; the formulation of this 
strategy has benefitted from the nuanced understanding of the 
challenges that exist from the side of RMC ministers, and a full 
appreciation of what the ATA asks of them. There are therefore 
several ways in which the strategy takes this into account: 
-
The overall framing of the strategy, and key goals, are 
aligned to the pressing priorities of RMC governments to 
drive economic growth, and situate agriculture within this 
(rather than, as before, a way of life); there is a target for 
ATA investments to deliver significant return on 
investment for RMC governments and open up 
agribusiness markets worth more than USD 150 billion 
per year.. 
-
Implementation commences with countries that already 
have the current political will to transform; demonstration 
of positive results in these countries (where it should be 
easiest) supports the creation of will to undertake required 
reforms and move ATA up the agenda of remaining RMC 
governments. Countries for which there is a promising 
entry point in terms of political will and the enabling 
environment to drive transformation have been identified; 
this de-risks attaining results. 
-
The PATA platform is also a key mechanism to drive 
consensus, 
coordination 
and 
momentum 
on 

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39 
Risk 
Mitigation Strategy 
transformation agendas 
Finally, the prior role of the President and the credibility that this 
confers should not be discounted in terms of opening up 
opportunities for an open dialogue with RMCs around what is 
possible and how to build effective political will for 
transformation.