Improving governance for responsible investment in agrifood systems in Liberia and Sierra Leone

Poverty and hunger are widespread in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Investing in agriculture, the main source of employment and income, is the best driver to address these challenges. However, it is critical to ensure that investment is responsible, sustainably benefiting livelihoods, the environment and communities. The principle of responsible investment in agriculture and food systems, which are known as the Rye Principles, are the first global agreement that defines what is responsible investment. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations empowers change agents in Liberia and Sierra Leone to promote and implement more inclusive decision-making processes, policies and regulations in line with the Rye Principles. This work started with a learning program for policymakers. The learning program is a component of FAO's efforts to help strengthen and create an able environment for responsible investment in agriculture. Policymakers, civil society people, the private sector are all key stakeholders in ensuring that that environment is enabling enough. And so this learning program brings together technical level policymakers to see how their capacity can be strengthened and they can become much more aware of the principles of RYE. During the program, the participants analyzed the most critical challenges related to responsible investment in agriculture, identifying gaps and solutions. Most times when investors are coming to a country, they focus mostly on gaining profit, how much profits they can be able to obtain. But in a situation, if you don't have those principles in terms of reasonable investment, at the end of the day, you have conflicts coming from around land issues, those different, different issues. But when you address those land issues, those cultural and traditional issues, youth and women issues, then you have benefits from them. The issue of the poor or weak negotiation processes is something that this process has pointed out for me, and it has made me to understand that in a process of responsible investment for agriculture, you have to involve every stakeholder that is going to be affected directly or indirectly by that investment program. So as to have a rolling out in a peaceful manner and to have everyone benefit with consensus agreement. The benefit is that, one, improving relationships, because where companies continue to violate rights of people, there will be conflict. And when conflict occurs, it disrupts operations and companies are not able to realize whatever thing they are expected to derive from the operations they are conducting. The objective of this program was to train and mobilize policymakers as key actors in the transformation of investment-related government structures. We work together with them to ensure that there is a consensus around the most critical issues. We work with them to ensure that there is learning also on the roles and responsibilities of the different institutions. And I think in all of these different aspects, we have made a lot of progress. FAO has also provided capacity development to non-state actors, enabling them to influence policies related to responsible investment in agriculture. One of the main outcomes achieved through this process is the establishment of multi-stakeholder platform in Liberia. Based on experience working with other multi-actor, multi-stakeholder platforms, we see that as a good tool to improving coordination of people involved in responsible investment in agriculture and food system.