What emanated from the AVANTI AG-Scan workshop held in Lesotho
By Lucia Phakisi, Deputy Director of Planning, Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, May 2019
The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security worked closely with the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation and Itad to carry out a rural sector self-assessment workshop known as an ‘AG-Scan’ between 10-12 April 2019, at Maseru Avani Hotel.
The AVANTI Initiative (advancing knowledge for agricultural impact) workshop is part of global capacity development initiative call. It drew together representatives from different government ministries, IFAD funded projects, UN partners, and NGOs to learn about the AG-Scan and customize the tool.
Through interactive participation, the representatives carried out in-country rural sector assessments under the five LEAPS pillars of Leadership, Evaluation and Monitoring , Accountability, Policies and Planning, and Statistics to understand the capability and challenges. The AG-Scan allows for key stakeholders to implement targeted improvements in Monitoring and Evaluation systems to manage for results based management in the rural sector and also to measure progress and report against the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and government priority targets in the agriculture sector.
What emanated from the workshop on the country’s AG-Scan is that there are positive attributes to share with the rest of the world, basically under the 5 pillars mentioned earlier. The Ministry has a monitoring and evaluation unit, the Ministry already collects agriculture data in collaboration with the Bureau of Statistics, and national strategies such as National Strategic Development Plan II, and National Agriculture Investment Plan are in place. The Ministry plays a coordinating role on issues related to the agriculture sector. The office of Audit General and Public Accounts Committee are in place to ensure accountability in the use of government funds.
The workshop led the country to focus their effort on areas that require immediate action, for example, skills and capacity enhancement, and to strengthening coordination.
Many thanks goes to the IFAD for funding a three-day workshop, Helvetas and Itad for partnering with the Ministry for enhancing capacity for results based management in the agriculture sector and report progress against UNSDGs, FAO for their continued support and being part of this important country event, and to ministries and NGOs for their valuable contribution.