Igniting agricultural growth in Africa
At the African Union (AU) summit in Maputo, Mozambique in 2003, African Heads of State and Government made a resolute and resounding commitment to tackle food insecurity and to accelerate growth of the continent’s food, agriculture and rural sectors.
Through the landmark Maputo Declaration, they adopted the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (Caadp) as their continent-wide blueprint for agriculture, pledging to allocate at least 10 percent of national budgets to agriculture, adopt sound agricultural development policies and achieve at least six percent growth in agricultural production per year.
Since then, we have seen how countries that have followed through on the Maputo Declaration and successfully implemented Caadp compacts have seen greater progress in the development of their agriculture sector, and in the improvement of their food security. To date, 40 countries have signed Caadp compacts and 28 countries have developed National Agriculture Investment Plans to operationalise the compacts in a process that has brought together governments, civil society, private sector, small scale producers and family farmers, women and the youth.
The AU African year of Agriculture and Food Security together with the UN International Year of Family Farming makes 2014 a good year to take stock of the Caadp framework and galvanise efforts aimed at increasing agricultural growth and transformation across the continent. We need to seize this opportunity to focus our attention, our policies and our advocacy actions in promoting agriculture.
Africa is witnessing a period of unprecedented economic growth and the region can be proud to have seven out of the 10 fast growing economies in the world; paradoxically, it is also the only continent in the world where the total number of hungry people has gone up since 1990. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the highest prevalence of undernourishment with one in four people estimated to be hungry.
The challenge now is to match the vision of a hunger free Africa with this sterling economic growth, and translate it into reality by tackling the multiple causes of hunger and undernutrition through partnerships and innovative financial solutions.
Recent discoveries of oil, gas and other new mineral deposits by a number of African countries provide a viable and diversified source of financing for Africa’s development. If well managed and properly channelled, some of the revenues from these resources can be invested in the agricultural sector through innovative mechanisms helping fulfil the promise of agriculture as the motor for African development.
Moreover, the continent is experiencing an unprecedented effort to support regional integration and solidarity that we salute. In this regard, the Africa Solidarity Trust Fund for Food Security is a unique initiative for mobilising resources from Africa for Africa with potential to help wipe out extreme hunger and build resilience of vulnerable people.
This and many other African-led initiatives being implemented across the continent need to be shared, adapted, upscaled and replicated across the continent. Achieving food security in Africa is a momentous challenge too great for any one entity to overcome alone. It must involve civil society, private sector, international agencies and governments of developing and developed countries. Above all, the people themselves need to be empowered to manage their own development.
As we move towards 2015 deadline of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), 20 countries in Africa have reached the first MDG hunger target of halving the proportion of undernourishment or have kept undernourishment levels below five percent since 1990. The focus has now clearly shifted from reducing hunger to eradicating it altogether. Already, this progressive shift has been demonstrated by the high-level meeting held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in July 2013 through an initiative led by the African Union Commission, FAO and the Lula Institute. Delegates at the meeting agreed on a road map to end hunger by 2025 through better policies, increased resource allocation to fight hunger and renewed partnership with a wide range of State and non-State actors.
At the upcoming AU Summit, African leaders are set to formally adopt this 2025 zero hunger goal. Food security for all is the stepping stone to make African economic growth inclusive and share the prosperity the region is facing. Investing in agriculture and in the youth can help ‘ignite the spark’ to make this happen.
—The author is director general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations
