A high-level mission led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has moved to significantly strengthen evidence-based agricultural policymaking across Southern Africa. Through a series of strategic engagements in Zambia and Zimbabwe, the mission has formalised collaboration with government institutions and international partners to deploy the AgIncentives initiative, a global framework designed to monitor policy incentives across nearly 90 countries and 70 agricultural commodities.
The initiative is backed by a heavyweight consortium including the World Bank, the OECD, and the International Food Policy Research Institute. With financial support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the FAO is now scaling these efforts in Africa via its Monitoring and Analyzing Food and Agricultural Policies programme. The recent mission focused on aligning global data standards with local agricultural priorities, ensuring that future policy reforms are grounded in rigorous market analysis rather than speculation.
In Zambia, the mission engaged with the Ministry of Agriculture and the Zambia Statistics Agency to identify key value chains for intensive monitoring. Discussions centred on commodities with high policy relevance, such as maize, soybean, and beef, alongside emerging sectors like aquaculture and honey. Local stakeholders noted that the integration of AgIncentives data would be instrumental in refining producer price mechanisms and improving the coordination of donor-funded agricultural projects.
Similarly in Zimbabwe, the delegation met with officials from the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water, and Rural Development to discuss the pressing need for robust data systems. The focus of the meeting shifted to climate-resilient commodities, such as sorghum and millet, as well as the poultry sector. Zimbabwean officials expressed a strong commitment to integrating these new indicators into existing public expenditure reviews, with the goal of creating a more transparent environment for market regulation and infrastructure investment.
The success of the programme will heavily depend on regional research hubs, particularly the Indaba Agricultural Policy Research Institute in Zambia and the Center for Agriculture and Food Policy in Zimbabwe. These institutions will provide essential support for data collection, helping to connect raw market statistics with practical government strategies. As the mission came to an end, both countries nominated national focal points and adopted standardised data templates to initiate the immediate mapping of agricultural incentives.
“By strengthening national evidence systems and fostering institutional collaboration, we are equipping governments with the tools necessary to design more effective policies that directly improve market incentives for farmers,” an FAO representative stated during the mission’s conclusion.
