CO-Awareness of AFCFTA for Agric St Oxfam Novib is one of the 17 national affiliates of the Oxfam International Confederation. It started life in 1956 as the Netherlands Organisation for International Assistance (Novib), and joined forces with Oxfam in 1994.  Working together in confederation, the Oxfam affiliates can speak with one clear and compelling voice on issues of global concern: climate change, health and education forall, agriculture, trade, and conflicts and emergencies.  Oxfam established this country office to support local organizations and projects.  Through this local office Oxfam Novib directly contributes towards this projects implementation.

Given the significant impacts of COVID-19, combined with the effects of conflict and climate change on agriculture, equitable livelihoods and food security,the next phase of TAP, Strand 2 will reflect the realities of these pressures in Oxfam’s donor and national level advocacy. In manyplaces, already precarious food systems were pushed to a breaking point as markets shut down;farmers lost access to land, natural resources and needed inputs; and ad hoc policy measures were put in place to stem the spread of coronavirus resulting in market closures and hikes in food prices, creating a spike in huger. The continuing rise in hunger across the African continent and stagnating financial resources due to slowed economic growth present serious challenges for African governments to realize poverty reduction andimproved food security, especially for the millions of women and men who grow, process, and sell food in local markets. Increased pressures on ODA donor budgets, as detailed in Strand 1, may also have impacts on the availability of funding for agricultural development.
With this investment, Oxfam will press for transformationalchange to support agriculture development as a core pillar of Africa’s green economic growth. Oxfam will advocate for African leaders at the national, regional and continental levels to make progress toward meeting their CAADP commitments (as defined inthe CADDP BR with a baseline to be identified in the Results Tracker); put inplace measures and strategies to build resilient food systems in the face of shocks and stressors such as COVID-19, climate change and other current crises (e.g. conflicts); and promote gender justice and women’s economic empowerment. Amongst major donors, specifically the Netherlands and the EU, Oxfam will call for increased resources and the implementation of improved development policies to support agriculture objectives in target African countries. Core to this work will be a focus on the following:
• Ensuring government and ODA budgets, policies, programs and practices are gender responsive and reflect the needs, interests and priorities of womensmall-scale producers. Wewill maintain our commitment to gender integration in agriculture, and in the next phase will seek to foster gender-sensitive economic recovery, climate resilience, and green growth at global and national levels.
• Strengthening the agency and influenceof non-state actors, particularly women small-scale producers in influencing spaces.
Oxfam relies on evaluation, research and real-time learning to inform our advocacy strategies and adapt as needed. In this reinvestment Oxfam will build on the progressmadeover the past six years (LEAP 2 and TAP 1) and strengthen the work by applying the lessons we have learned through our experience, evaluations and research. In spite of strong commitments and the adoption of policies, governments and donors that aretargeted under TAP have yet to implement agriculture agendas in ways that fully realize the potential of women and men small-scale producers. Oxfam will continue working with local partners to promote social accountability as a tool to effectively improve implementation of policies, and use our local to global reach to skillfully advocate in multiple arenas (e.g. subnational and national budget and policy processes, high-level international meetings) and across different targets (donors, AU, RECs, national andlocal governments inAfrica).
Oxfam is committed to gender justice. Through promotion of tools such as gender-responsive budgeting, Oxfam will continue to work towards long-term and transformational changes in the lives of women small-scale producers and gender equality in the agriculture sector. We do this by advocating for changes to formal laws and policies and their implementation, increasing women’s access to resources and opportunities to voice their concerns and demands directly in decision-making spaces, supporting efforts to build women and men’s knowledge, skills and consciousness around these issues, and where possible, addressing informal cultural norms and exclusionary practices.
Our donor target work is grounded in principles of country ownership to ensure that the messages and issues wepromote are informed by national priorities, plans and policies (e.g. CAADP BR, NDCs, green growth strategies) in the African countries that are part of Strand 2.