Events

Joint Press Release

From reducing to eradicating hunger: a new common goal that can make the difference

30 June 2013, Addis Ababa – Africa has vibrant societies that are eager to achieve development and eradicate hunger, agreed African Ministers and other senior officials meeting at the African Union in Addis Ababa today, in the framework of the High Level Meeting of African and international leaders to end hunger in the continent. The Ministers were meeting ahead of the meeting of African Union Heads of State and Government tomorrow, under the theme “New, unified approaches to end hunger in Africa”.

The will to promote food security in Africa motivated the African Union, FAO and the Lula Institute to partner for a unified approach to end hunger in Africa by 2025 within the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) framework. About 15 Heads of State and Government positively responded to the invitation from the AU, FAO and Lula Institute to participate in the event and add value to CAADP by sharing knowledge on investment to vulnerable people.

The positive response from the Heads of State is important because there is growing consensus on the continent that strong political commitment is required for Africa to effectively strengthen resilience and eradicate hunger. Through CAADP, Africa has the foundation on which to build sustainable solutions to hunger, the Ministers said.

It is possible to end hunger

The HLM is gathering experiences from different African and non-African countries, such as Malawi, Angola, Ethiopia, Niger, China, Vietnam and Brazil. Combining investment in agriculture with social protection policies and inclusive growth development, many countries have managed to reduce hunger and poverty. Brazil has lifted 36 million people out of extreme poverty in the past ten years.

"Hunger will not be eradicated unless we include the poor in the government budget. I am convinced that ending hunger will only be possible if transformed into a state policy. The commitment of civil society is also important to the success of this process,” said founder and honorary President of Lula Institute, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

“I’m certain that every country in Africa and in the world can end hunger if they include the poor in their national budget. Economic growth alone is not enough," emphasized Lula.

The AUC Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture, Mrs Tumusiime Rhoda Peace, said: “The CAADP Framework is steadily gaining recognition as a comprehensive, multi-sector approach for boosting production and productivity, and also for improving resilience and food security, by scaling up agricultural investment and increasing economic opportunities for entire populations. It is, therefore advocated that CAADP provides the platform for building and facilitating the renewed partnerships as well as technically backstopping a unified approach for scaling up hunger eradication efforts at all implementation levels.”

On his part, Director-General of FAO, Mr. Graziano da Silva, stressed: "We can win the war against hunger only if we work together. This meeting in Addis Ababa will support our efforts by transforming political will into further and coordinated action”.

The Renewed Partnership has the intention to contribute to the CAADP agenda. The synergy from combining CAADP with its renewed momentum and social protection under the partnership for Unified Approaches to End Hunger in Africa would justify the ambition to achieve the following objectives:

 Eliminate hunger and poverty by 2025, in the same time frame as for the Sustaining CAADP Momentum (SCM);

 In the countries implementing the partnership’s approach, reduce hunger by 40 percent by 2017;

 Improve access to food all year round, reducing the need for external food aid within 10 years;

 Prioritize defeat of stunting, especially in children under 2 years, and to provide nutrition of pregnant women and young children;

 Double the productivity of staples within 5 to 10 years, without compromising the sustainability of farming systems; and

 Reduce food waste and losses to levels no worse than global averages, with the ambition to minimise them.

Promising expectations
Despite most countries in Africa experiencing economic growth of unprecedented proportions as well as improved governance and human development indicators in the last decade, the continent has 239 million undernourished people, representing nearly a quarter of the entire population.

The High Level meeting is expected to agree upon and commit to a set of principles, policies and strategies with a focus on strategies for eradicating hunger. Key among them will be support to integrate purpose-specific food-security and social-development strategies and actions into CAADP investment plans.

Today’s ministerial meeting was preceded by a Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue on 29 June 2013, attended by more than 100 representatives of civil society, producer organizations, the private sector, cooperatives, the research community in Africa and other non-state actors.

This meeting allowed for these important stakeholders to voice their views and discuss their essential role in the formulation and implementation of this Renewed Partnership. Recognizing that the problems of food insecurity and malnutrition in Africa are multi-faceted and multidimensional, the solution requires a multi-stakeholder partnership, which is being promoted during this High Level Meeting. They stressed the importance of accountability, civil society participation and strong political commitment from governments to successfully promote food security.

The Renewed Partnership for ending hunger in Africa will be developed according to a Road Map and a Declaration adopted by the High Level Meeting.

Contact
HLM Meeting’s AU-FAO-Lula Institute Joint Communication team

Tel: Tel: (251) 11 551 77 00
Information and Communication Directorate
MUSABAYANAW@africa-union.org
African Union Commission

Addis Ababa High Level Meeting to agree unified approach

25 June 2013, Rome, Italy - African Union Commission Chair Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma and FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva discussed the forthcoming High-Level international meeting on eradicating hunger in Africa in talks at FAO headquarters today.

The two-day High Level meeting, opening in Addis Ababa on June 30, and being attended by African and international leaders, aims to reach agreement on a new, unified approach to ending hunger in Africa by 2025 in the framework of the African Union’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).

The Meeting will be preceded on June 29 by a preparatory Multistakeholders Dialogue Session.

Dlamini Zuma and the Director-General agreed that the target date of 2025, proposed by the African Union and endorsed by FAO, will encourage stakeholders to work harder to achieve the goal of hunger eradication. Almost 240 million Africans, or 23 percent of the population, suffer from chronic undernourishment.

Praise for HLM preparations

Dlamini Zuma expressed her appreciation of the way the Addis Ababa meeting is being prepared. The meeting is co-organized by the African Union Commission, FAO and Brazil’s Instituto Lula.

Also discussed in today’s talks was the Africa Solidarity Trust Fund, which she described as “a great initiative”. Angola announced last week it will pay $10 million into the Fund. Equatorial Guinea earlier donated $30 million.

The Director-General noted that the fund will be a powerful instrument for hunger eradication and said it should be used to boost food security, increase the resilience of vulnerable populations and help improve social protection for the poorest relying on agriculture.

Zuma commended the fact that it focuses on the neediest countries and advocated for support to women in particular by funding programmes that secure their empowerment.

In answer to a question from the Director-General regarding the condition of former South African President Nelson Mandela, Dlamini Zuma said he was receiving the best possible health care.

Dlamini Zuma, also met at FAO with the group of African Permanent Representatives to the Organization, whom she briefed on the Addis Ababa meeting.

“By 2025, 330 million young Africans will enter the labour market, and the African population will double by 2050. This means that more jobs need to be created to absorb the manpower and more food needs to be produced in order to counter food insecurity; how do we respond to this challenge and opportunity by improving the agricultural technical and vocational education and training? Mrs Estherine Fotabong (NEPAD Agency Head of Directorate for Programme Implementation and Coordination) announced in her key note speech in Pretoria on 9 April, 2013.
Mrs Fotabong was speaking at the two-day Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Agricultural Technical and Vocational Education and Training (ATVET) workshop on scaling up the current pilot implementation from 2014 to 2016. The scaling up of ATVET will focus on systemic curricular development in agriculture at national level in Africa.
ATVET was launched as a project of NEPAD CAADP in 2012, with the support of the German Development Cooperation (GIZ). It has since been piloted in Ghana and Kenya where the necessary pilot training measures are being developed, implemented and integrated into the national agricultural education systems. The successful approaches will then subsequently be extended to other partner countries within the CAADP implementation framework. CAADP is the AU-NEPAD long-term plan to improve food security, nutrition, and increase incomes in Africa’s largely farming based economies. It does this by raising agricultural productivity by at least six per cent per year and increasing public investment in agriculture to 10 per cent of national budgets annually. Since its establishment in 2003, over 40 African countries are actively engaged in CAADP at different levels and agricultural growth has spread to several African countries.
Also speaking at the ATVET workshop in Pretoria, Mr Martin Bwalya, Head of CAADP at NEPAD, reported that the goal of the workshop is to develop a strategy for the up scaling of the ATVET project, determining the expected outcomes and outputs as well as planning the necessary activities and input for this project to contribute to the overall 6% agricultural growth on the continent. Mr Bwalya highlighted the objective of the workshop as being, “The formulation of strategies for anchoring ATVET in the countries and regional institutions and other emerging initiatives within the framework of CAADP.”
Mr Ousmane Djibo (GIZ-CAADP Program Manager) drew attention to domestic financing and investment that are crucial for success in reaching equitable and sustainable growth in agriculture and its value chain. Mr Djibo emphasised that, “Another condition for growth is investment in human resources – how farmers are using their assets and smallholder farmers should become agri-preneurs.”
The GIZ Advisor at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development in Germany (BMZ), Mr Harald Pfisterer echoed the workshop’s participants’ consensus on the need for ATVET’s doors to be opened for other key players to come on board on undertaking this enormous task. This cooperative task includes NEPAD CAADP, agricultural private sector associations, individual private companies, farmer organisations, training service providers and development partners.
Country presentations from Namibia, Sierra Leone, Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana and Kenya reflected the important role of vocational education and training in responding to Africa’s challenges of rural unemployment and income disparities; food and nutrition security; and climate change. The workshop closed on 10 April, 2013 with a firm commitment to mainstream vocational and technical education within national agricultural investment plans.
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Contact information
http://www.nepad-caadp.net/
Abraham Sarfo: CAADP ATVET Advisor Abraham.sarfo@nepad.org

The Finnish and South African Gov¬ernments have committed their con¬tinued support to NEPAD’s BioFISA Programme, as concrete achieve¬ments have been made in combat¬ing hunger, sustaining livestock and curing diseases. This follows a recent meeting in Johannesburg to evaluate the impact of BioFISA which is sup¬ported by the two countries. At the conference, experts took stock of the Programme’s track record since its establishment in 2009.

In less than three years, the Pro¬gramme has improved the lives of more than 600 small-scale mush¬room growers in Malawi, Namibia and Swaziland, by providing technical and scientific approaches to farming the crop.
In addition, more than 100 agriculture extension officers and researchers in Angola, Namibia, Malawi, Mozam¬bique, Swaziland and Zambia have been trained in mushroom farming. These new approaches to produc¬ing edible fungus have improved the quality as well as yields of the crop.
In Malawi for example, a recent random tour of five villages around Bunda Agriculture College in the commercial capital Lilongwe, showed positive results. In each village several female farmers are growing mushrooms.

“My husband concentrates on tobacco. The men in this village are sceptical about mushroom farming. So we the womenfolk got together and we are doing very well. From my sales, I bought a bicycle which I use every day to deliver my produce to Bunda College. They in turn take it to the city and sell it for us. Now that my husband’s tobacco business is not very profitable, I am playing a bigger role in supporting the family from my mushroom sales”.
Mrs Kwalira says she uses the money she gets, to buy uniforms and pay school fees for her children.
NEPAD also supported the establish¬ment of aquaculture and fish farming facilities in Malawi’s Dowa District. The farmers have been trained in how to effectively grow fish using very simple techniques.
Beneficiaries of this project, Flora Mwase and Headman Matchayasim¬bi say they can now afford basic necessities and have become role models among other farmers in how to integrate fruit and vegetables crop¬ping by using pond water.
Through the proceeds, Flora has been able to construct a house with iron-sheet roofing. Previously, she lived in a grass-thatched mud house. She also bought a radio, an impor¬tant form of entertainment and infor¬mation for people in rural areas.

An effective farmer participatory research programme and seed funds from NEPAD and the Malawian Government were essential for the success. There is now increased de¬mand by farmers to extend fish pond farming to cover other districts.