Implementation of Decentralized Food Procurement Programmes and the Impact of the Policy, Institutional and Legal Enabling Environment: the case of PRONAE and PAA Africa in Mozambique

Organization(s): FAO, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth
Author: Israel Klug, Luana F. J. Swensson
Regions: Southern Africa
Country: Mozambique
Year: 2017
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The development and implementation of an efficient institutional food procurement programme (IFPP —which aims to link smallholder producers to institutional markets and promote development of food supply systems—is not a simple or straightforward task. It requires a series of conditions that must be coordinated and matched together. These conditions depend on—but go far beyond—governmental will and the availability of demand. The central idea of this paper is that the policy and legal frameworks within which an IFPP is designed and the institutional environment in which it is implemented influence
and can have a key impact on its successful implementation. Based on the assumption that policy reforms need to be accompanied by alignments in the legal and institutional frameworks and also be supported by an adequate policy enabling environment to be effective, this paper aims to assess the impact of these frameworks on the implementation of decentralised IFPPs. It also looks at how the key challenges and barriers to the access of smallholder farmers to these programmes relates to these frameworks. The paper also aims to demonstrate the role of pilot initiatives in supporting this adaptation process. Different procurement modalities impose different challenges and require different types of support from and adaptations to policy, institutional and legal frameworks. Pilot initiatives can play an important role in testing and providing a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities of different decentralized procurement models (supporting the choice of the most appropriate one within the country context) and, in particular, on informing the adaptations needed to these frameworks for effective implementation of the modality chosen. The paper will do this by analysing Mozambique’s experience of IFPPs represented by theNational School Feeding Programme (PRONAE) and the Purchase from Africans for Africa (PAA Africa) programme. PAA Africa was a joint initiative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), the Brazilian government and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), which aimed to support and promote adapted local food purchasing initiatives in five African countries.

Social Protection and Human Rights