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Africa needs $20bn for farmers to end perennial food insecurity

26 March 2010, The Citizen Daily
URL: http://thecitizen.co.tz/news/4-national-news/936-africa-needs-20bn-for-farmers-to-end-perennial-food-insecurity

News Alert for: Africa Agriculture

Africa needs $20bn for farmers to end perennial food insecurity
The Citizen Daily
By Zephania Ubwani, Arusha Africa needs an investment amounting to some $20 billion (Sh26 trillion) in agriculture investment in order to eradicate chronic ...

Africa needs $20bn for farmers to end perennial food insecurity

By Zephania Ubwani, Arusha

Africa needs an investment amounting to some $20 billion (Sh26 trillion) in agriculture investment in order to eradicate chronic food insecurity in the continent where millions go hungry every year, it was revealed here on Tuesday.

National governments must also commit at least 10 per cent of their annual budgets to boost food production, a leader of the continental civil society organisation stressed at the start of food security talks.

Ousainou Ngum, the executive director for the Agency for Cooperation and Research Development (ACORD) said African countries must realign their investment policies to focus on agriculture and food production.

Noting that food crisis facing the continent was to blame for incoherent policies, Mr Ngum argued that if leaders do not coordinate their policies well, millions of Africans will continue to starve due to food shortages.

“Our leaders must create investments that are conducive to agricultural sector, with a bias towards small scale farmers, women and pastoralists,” he told officials from 13 African countries including EA states.

According to him, at least 270 million Africans out of the continent’s population of 800 million were suffering from hunger.

He added that strategies to increase food production in the continent must also address security to land tenure and better access to markets.

Mr Donald Kasongi, the coordinator of ACORD in Tanzania said globalisation has made Africa produce what it does not consume and consume what it does not produce, leading to dependency on food imports or aid.

He blamed low level of agricultural technology and poor infrastructure for having contributed to insufficient production of food and failure to be delivered to the markets in case of bumper harvests.

He said it was pity most of the African countries have good agricultural and food production policies which have not been implemented for the well beings of millions of people who are at risk of hunger every year.

His remarks were echoed by Mr Elias Mtinda, the food security advisor with ActionAid, Tanzania who suggested that policies that most countries have been using to reach food security fundamentally do not work.

He criticised the fallacy of liberalisation policies which encouraged market-driven, crop production for export at the expense of food production for local consumption within the country