Agriculture News South Africa

Southern African grain stakeholders establishes regional platform

Founded by eight Southern African countries, the formal establishment of a regional network for grain stakeholders took place on 30 September 2015. Stakeholders from Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe were present at the workshop and adopted a business plan to guide the operations of the platform for the next three years.
tpsdave via
tpsdave via pixabay

In addition to this, the founding members discussed coordination guidelines with regard to the governance of the platform and a permanent Steering Committee was elected. The Steering Committee is representative of various nodes of the grains value chain, i.e. producers, traders, processors and service providers.

The Southern Africa Grains Network, SAGNET, is a regional network of actors in the grains value chains who have collaborated in order to influence change through evidence-based advocacy. It is centered around three strategic pillars which have been identified as key aspects of a vibrant grains sector, namely policy, capacity and information.

The aforementioned Steering Committee which was elected comprises Julius Wambura (Tanzania), Tafadzwa Msarara (Zimbabwe) as well as Jacob Mwale (Zambia) as chairman and Gerson Daniel (Mozambique) as vice-chairman. The Committee will be responsible for driving the implementation of the business plan as well as providing strategic guidance to the platform.

SAGNET will work closely through the SACAU Secretariat to implement the business plan. For more information regarding the platform, contact the Programme Coordinator, Tlale Matseke on gro.uacas@ekestamt.

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