Activities

Advocacy activities for Esaff Eswatini

Agriculture Budget and Accountability

  1. Parliament Lobbying
  2. Agriculture policy
  3. Climate change
  4. Market
  5. Anti GMO
  6. Trade

Eswatini Budget Speech 2019

Project Influence pays off in the Kingdom of Eswatini

Efforts by Bread for the World sponsored project entitled Project Influence are beginning to pay off in the Kingdom of Eswatini. The new government of Eswatini has not taken lightly the campaign by small scale farmers under ESAFF Eswatini to increase the national budget for Agriculture in line with the Malabo Declaration. The noise around that has made a positive impact since in the recent past years government in 2017/18 fiscal had a budget of SZL741 Million for Agriculture which represented 3.8% and in 2018/19 there was a major improvement since the national budget stood at SZL1.4 Billion which represented 6.8 % of the national budget and in the current fiscal year 2019/20 the national budget stands at SZL 1.7 Billion for Agriculture which represents 7.7% of the national budget. This every year is coming as good news to small scale farmers even though there are still issues around how this money is spent.

However the ESAFF Eswatini is also pleased that her efforts have not made government to only increase the national budget, but also has helped government to take Agriculture seriously. In newly launched Government Strategic Road Map to Economic Recovery 2019-2022, Agriculture is one of the five top priority areas along side with Education and ICT, Mining and Energy, Tourism, Agro-processing and Manufacturing. The Economic Recovery Strategy has been developed by the new government within 6 months in the office to ensure that there is a clear road map to be followed by all stakeholders aimed to address the economic challenges the country is faced with. The medium to long term focus of the Agriculture sector are:

  • Build capacity and skills to support small holders farmers on commercial farming and improved technologies;
  • Incentivize, identify and support farmers with potential to move to commercial farming.

These strategic areas are in line with the vision and mission of ESAFF Eswatini, which the organization now has to do more advocacy and lobbying work to ensure that these are implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture which is the ministry responsible. ESAFF Eswatini will continue to work with partners and stakeholders to ensure that such is realized