The Pan African Agribusiness Apex Chamber (PAAAC) is a conglomerate of the domestic private sector Agribusinesses Apex Bodies at National level coming together to form the PAAAC. Thus, the Chamber represents voluntary membership of individual national agribusiness associations including all actors that are engaged in the entire agribusiness value chains. These are input dealers, producer organizations, agriculture services providers, trade associations, agriculture finance institutions and cooperatives.
The Pan African strategy for the agribusiness chamber has gone beyond just a virtual platform to institutional setting and development. Its establishment was conceptualized as a result of stakeholders concerns that the capacity of domestic African agribusinesses requires more strengthening to be able to undertake business to business activities and partnerships with their counterpart agribusinesses from across the globe.
In the same context, the Pan African Agribusiness Apex Chamber serves as the continental voice of African agribusinesses in interacting with the organs of the African Union and National Governments in driving agribusiness development and related policy initiatives at National, Regional and Continental levels. The specific objective is to advance the mobilization and strengthening of the responsible private sector investments in agribusiness as a catalyst for achieving the implementation objectives of the AfCFTA.
In this context, the Pan-African Agribusiness Apex Chamber will continue to offer significant support to the implementation of the AfCFTA in the agricultural sector and to expanding intra-African agricultural trade through enhanced coordination in the formulation of trade policies, customs regulations and certification, trade facilitation measures as well as through facilitating networking opportunities within Africa and internationally (including Business-to-business (B2B) relations). Furthermore, it is also understood that improved knowledge management by this agribusiness umbrella organization would facilitate the adoption of best practices by National agribusiness platforms, thereby increasing their capacity to disseminate best practices among their members – which include commodity associations and farmer organisations.