ActionAid Nigeria, AAN, Wednesday, said it is set to submit its third biennial review on agricultural accountability at the African Union, AU, Assembly to mitigate the foreseen challenges of food security.
This is came as AAN said it would submit the review at the 35th ordinary Session of the AU Assembly (Heads of State and Government Session) in February 2022.
Speaking during the pre-biennial review launch with the theme: “Strengthening Accountability and Utilization of Biennial Review Results – the Role of the Media and Non-State Actors,” Constance Okeke, International Project Manager, Public Finance for Agriculture, AAN, explained that the biennial review is an accountability process instituted to help measure progress of the comprehensive African Agriculture Development program implementation in all the African countries.
She explained further that, “Every two years a review is done to see how this program is been implemented. And countries generate data and submit to the regional economic communities who in turn submit to the African Union and it is analysed and prepared as a form of report to heads of states. So during their summit at the beginning of the year this report is released to them.
“This is the third Biennial review, it started in 2017 with the first report released in 2018 summit and the second BR for 2019 and submitted at the African Heads of State summit 2020.”
She however noted that the third biennial review for 2021 will be submitted and released in the upcoming African Heads of State summit this February by next week.
Okeke charged the media to be accountable in reportage at all times, especially in matters relating to agriculture.
According to her, “The idea of having this event partnering with our partners is to ensure that one of the primary key holders in the Agriculture Development which is the media is at the forefront of these issues, which will help push information accurately, push accountability processes across board so that we all have the shared prosperity and improved livelihood.
“The idea of bringing everybody is to have uniformed information and then be prepared to engage the report once it is released next week.”