Moving from "we lack" to "we have"

Over the past couple of days, I've been in Nairobi participating in regional donor-sponsored meetings on addressing food security. But today began the conference I've been waiting to attend. One of the major principles we've been promoting has be a country-led and country-owned process. Great. But what does that actually look like and mean? Is it actually happening?

So this conference is put on by the African Union's New Partnership for Africa's Development and the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme ( www.caadp.net ), as well as the regional economic community COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa). It's actually more like a work meeting, with specific breakout sessions and tasks to address key issues along value chains. And the delegations include diverse stakeholders - government officials, producer associations, trade associations, development organizations, civil society, etc, etc. And I've been hearing some great things:

"Before, the government just made their own policies, but now, because of the CAADP process, they are involving the private sector"

"We have found that if we organized ourselves and explained our situation, and the government worked with us to change the regulations to what we need."

"All 10 ministries related to the agricultural sector agreed to this one plan, which is amazing"

We then broke into working groups to discuss different agricultural commodities, and the specific opportunities and challenges in each sub-sector. There are definitely opportunities, but we expressed many constraints and underlying causes, ranging from political will and interests to lack of capacity and lack of standards.

Afterwards I spoke with someone who helped put some of the session in perspective for me. He has been working with every East and Southern African country represented at this conference to move this country-led process forward. He said he was getting so discouraged in our session because he kept hearing "we lack...", "we lack...", "we lack...". He doesn't want them to see a tremendous gaping hole, but rather to identify the specific gap. It isn't that we lack standards, it's that the standards aren't enforced. Do we really lack capacity? So much has been invested in each of the leaders that are represented at the conference. Have they not received quite a bit already that can be claimed?

The man also shared a couple of other stories. He has cone to these countries and asked, who is the maize expert or the cassava expert, and has found it difficult to have people step forward and say, "yes, I am". Or when he was working with papaya farmers, they tremendously increased their yields and capabilities. Yet when the donor organization came by, the farmers shared, "we lack...", including "we lack capacity." I was so inspired by this man's firm believe that, yes, we have something to offer. We need to believe that.

I must confess that after talking with this man I realized that I too was guilty of seeing things through the "lacking" perspective. Even in this working session, I had been so quick to see gaping holes. I think part of it comes down to "the one with the hammer sees nails everywhere" (or however that proverb goes). We as Western educated people see all the areas where our expertise should come in. When can those who have traditionally been in power get to a point of humility and willingness to listen, and when can those who have been traditional recipients stand with confidence and belief in what they have to offer and share their vision of the way forward?

I think that's what is exciting me about this conference and the paradigm shift that I believe is beginning to take place. With these CAADP country-led plans for food security, we in the donor community are saying yes, we will listen to what you have developed and use that as a context for moving forward. I feel like I'm beginning to witness a change in perspective that has the potential to be revolutionary.

SWAHILI WORD OF THE DAY: "maendeleo" means "development"