Au commission works to end food insecurity in Africa

Au commission works to end food insecurity in Africa
By Ugonma Cokey, Lagos

The African Union Commission says it has put in place measures to mitigate problems of food security in the continent.

In an interview with Voice of Nigeria, Head of Agriculture and Food Security in the African Union Commission, Yemi Akinbamijo, said that the measures include, medium and short and long term measures.

Describing the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development programme agreed to in Maputo 2003, by heads of states, which almost 30 countries have signed to, as the “Defacto blueprint of Agricultural Development Agenda on the continent”, Mr Akinbamijo said the document was the long term measure being pursued vigorously by the AU Commission and the African governments to boost food security on the continent.

While acknowledging that Africa has had a lot of food crisis in the recent past, he said “we are a lot better than where we were 10 years ago in terms of having an evidence based approach towards dealing with the issue of hunger and food insecurity on the continent.”

On a medium and short term basis Akinbamijo said the Commission has been working with its strategic Partners, the donor community to deal with the most recent scenario of famine in the Horn of Africa and “have actually worked with FAO, IGAD, WFP to “first of all to address the emergency and then to deal with the root cause of the emergency”.

 “A pledging conference was held in August, and together with our partners, we are looking at actually putting together something in the neighbourhood of 30 million US dollars to address the short and medium term scenarios.” He said.

He said that the Commission was also sensitizing members on the need to sign up to the CAADP document.

THE CAADP COMPACT

According to Akinbamijo, the COMPACT “simply  puts together a business strategy that is country owned, country led and has the buy -in of the political instruments of that particular country at the highest level including the  development partners in that country.”

“So what happens at the end of the day is that the country has a strategy that is home grown, that is evidence based, that is addressing the constraints and are really customized to that country, that allows for intelligence in the disbursement of funds and development of business plans that will actually address the constraints that were jointly identified by the policy makers ,the stakeholders and the development partners. ”He said.

Akinbamijo said that CAADP is the issue of food security, According to him, ”there is no 2 ways around it, everybody knows that Africa is food insecure, more than a third of food aids end up in the Africa. Africa is spending close to 50 billion dollars per annum on food imports, the evidences are there and it is glaring that we are a net importer of food and we are actually spending money we do not have to purchase these food”.

So it is a moratorium that is incumbent on the political leaders. We should have access to food on the continent. One instrument that the leaders have put in place to strengthen home grown food production is CAADP; as such there should be no debate about it.”

While accepting that it might take countries some time to sign the document, Akinbamijo said “It is imperative for countries and concurrent with common knowledge and to common sense for governments to sign the document. It is a summit decision, it’s not a choice it’s an imperative, and we’ve got to do it.”

Background

In establishing CAADP, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, NEPAD, set it a bold goal: to eliminate hunger and reduce poverty through agriculture. To achieve this goal, CAADP addresses policy and capacity issues across the entire agricultural sector and the African continent.

CAADP is entirely African-led and African-owned and represents African leaders' collective vision for agriculture in Africa. To realise their vision, the leaders agreed to increase public investment in agriculture by a minimum of 10% of their national budgets and to raise agricultural productivity by at least 6%.

CAADP falls under four pillars; land and water management, market access, food supply and hunger and agricultural research. Each deals with key issues.

The land and water management pillar aims to extend the area under sustainable land management and reliable water control systems. Market access aims to increase market access through improved rural infrastructure and other trade-related interventions.

The food supply and hunger is to improve domestic production and marketing, facilitate regional trade in food staples, and build household productivity and assets, while the agricultural research pillar aims to improve agricultural research and systems in order to disseminate appropriate new technologies. 

Cokey