By Wole Fatunbi
It is no longer a sad story from Africa! As the continent took a giant leap in managing its soil resources. The year 2024 signified a change as the Africa Union Commission and AUDA-NEPAD led the broad stakeholder group in African agriculture to the presidential summit on “Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health.” The presidential summit held on the 7th to 9th of May 2024 at the Jomo Kenyatta International Conference Center (JKICC) in Nairobi, Kenya, signified a major milestone in the continental effort to manage the African soil. The summit drew the participation of an unprecedented number of presidents and high-level leaders in African countries and development partners from across the globe. It approved the implementation of the Soil Initiative for Africa (SIA) as the long-term framework for managing African soil and the ‘Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Action Plan (AFSH-AP) as the first ten-year implementation plan for the SIA. African head of State made eight distinct declaration points to be achieved in the next ten years to halt land degradation and restore at least 70 percent of the African soil to Healthy status. It also made eight clear calls to action to different agencies and partners to ensure the implementation of the actions of the summit. The successful summit is a product of about seven years of back-end work of different partners within and outside Africa to get the continent’s attention to managing its soil. Indeed, “Our Soil is Our Life,” and we can not afford to send the current and the posterity of Africa down the lane of food slavery and poverty!
Learning from the experience of the 2006 fertilizer summit, the African stakeholders, led by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), have taken the bull by the horns to drive the implementation of the Action plan. FARA was nominated to be the secretariat for coordinating the SIA implementations in close alliance with the oversight role of AUC and AUDA-NEPAD. This was based on recognizing the African stakeholders and the lead development partners to have an “An-Africa Owned and An Africa Led initiative.” All efforts are geared at sustaining momentum and getting into the field to implement action with strong structures comprising six thematic coalitions of willing organizations to provide implementation support. The creation of Regional Hubs by the RECs and the SROS to coordinate regional technical and policy actions. The secretariat with AUC and AUDA-NEPAD has mobilized all stakeholders to develop a global work plan for implementing the action, including smart guidelines for domesticating the actions into the country planning process and reporting into the biennial process of the AU.
As we commemorate the 2024 World Soil Day, the stripe word “Caring for the Soil: Measure, Monitor, Manage” resonates very well with what Africa has begun to do with its soil. Through the SIA, Africa will build a solid effort to develop a veritable Soil Information System (SIS) with decision-support tools to help farmers and other soil users. SIA secretariat will launch the “Soil Health Youth Vanguard” to build the society’s human capital on soil health. It will further support extensive communication and Knowledge management on managing Africa’s greatest Asset, its soil.
Happy World Soil Day 2024!
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