April 18, 2018
Mai Mahmoud, Senior Research Assistant, IFPRI-Egypt
Prioritization of rural investments is crucial for ensuring inclusive growth, sustainable development and food security. The Arab (Agricultural) Investment for Development Analyzer (AIDA) project develops an economic planning tool that will help governments and analysts in the design of evidence-based agricultural investment plans.
AIDA is a three-year project (2017-2020) that is funded by IFAD, with co-financing from CGIAR-PIM, and implemented by IFPRI and its partners with focus on Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia. This project builds on the previous IFAD-IFPRI-CGIAR PIM project "Decreasing Vulnerability to Conflict in Arab Countries through Rural Development".
A key challenge facing governments at different stages of development is determining the appropriate allocation of public spending across different sectors and locations as well as different policy interventions (Figure 1). AIDA toolkit is built to assist governments in meeting this planning challenge, by developing a comprehensive planning approach with three main elements: an investment and policy analysis module, the AIDA offline Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, and the AIDA online model. Thus, AIDA integrates both analysis of agriculture investments and policies with CGE economy-wide modelling which evaluates the impact of agricultural spending on growth, job creation, and household poverty.
AIDA project encompasses not only the development of AIDA toolkit, but also the promotion of evidence-based policy making. A major innovation of the AIDA project is the design of web-based interface – AIDA online tool – which facilitates the use of CGE models in policy making without requiring sophisticated knowledge of modeling software. In addition, the project seeks to strengthen the community of practice by providing training workshops and online tutorials on how to use and update AIDA tool.
With the aim of engaging stakeholders from target countries in the project's implementation, a series of Country Focus Group workshops was conducted by IFPRI in collaboration with IFAD in Tunis, Amman and Beirut. The aim of these workshops was to present AIDA project to key stakeholders from the government, research institutions and development organizations. It also provided an opportunity to receive feedback from local experts, especially on the country-specific needs and characteristics.
AIDA Tunisia workshop participants emphasized the importance of the project in informing development strategies by providing evidence on the impact of agricultural investments on economic development. In fact, the agriculture sector in Tunisia has high growth potentials, with an average GDP contribution of 10 percent of over the past decade. The analytical tool developed through AIDA project can help in improving the allocation of public investments by taking into consideration the divergence between different regions within Tunisia.
In Jordan, unlike most other MENA countries, the agriculture sector went through substantial transformation from staple crops to (export-oriented) high value crops over the past decades. However, regional instability is negatively affecting agricultural exports in recent years, which resulted in significant losses to farm businesses. Thus, AIDA modelling will be very useful for estimating the likely impacts of different policy interventions on agriculture productivity, job creation and food security in Jordan. AIDA Jordan workshop participants agreed that the project has a promising potential for supporting rural policies and investments that improve the livelihoods of small and medium farm holders.
Agriculture in Lebanon is blessed by favorable natural conditions that allow for growing a wide variety of crops. AIDA Lebanon workshop participants acknowledged that AIDA toolkit can help in making the case for increasing public investments in the agriculture sector, given that the share of agriculture in the fiscal budget was less than one percent in 2017/18. Using CGE modelling, AIDA tool can simulate several policy scenarios that take into consideration the peculiarities of the Lebanese economy.
Besides the country focus group workshops, IFPRI team conducted a number of bilateral meetings with key stakeholders from pertinent ministries and government institutions in the four target countries. In Egypt, IFPRI team met with senior officials at the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, the Agriculture Research Center, the Central Agency for Mobilization and Statistics, and the Ministry of Planning, Monitoring and Administrative Reform. In all meetings, AIDA initiative was welcomed, especially given its potential for informing the development of Egypt's Economic Plan for 2018-2022 and agricultural policy planning.
IFPRI is keen on providing world-class expertise and strengthening the capacity of local partners in AIDA countries. As a next step, IFPRI will pursue its collaboration with government entities and local partners on the technical as well as the administrative levels. Moreover, AIDA mid-term workshop will bring together participants from all AIDA member countries to showcase preliminary AIDA tool applications and provide capacity building on the use of AIDA.
