Africa needs to invest more in agriculture to rescue millions from hunger, aid agency Oxfam says, warning both African nations and donors have failed to meet funding pledges.
African leaders pledged in 2003 to devote 10 percent of their national budgets to agriculture, a goal that only seven nations have met, Oxfam said in a report released on the eve of an African Union summit devoted to agriculture.
Most African countries are spending about 4.5 percent of their budgets on farm programmes, even though Oxfam's report found that such spending reduces poverty and stimulates local markets.
Donors have also failed to live up to their pledges, the charity said. After promising 12 billion dollars to help poor countries cope with the global food crisis last year, only one billion dollars has actually reached the ground, it said.
"One in three Africans is now affected by food crises. Investing in agriculture is part of the long-term solution to the food, financial and climate crises," said Lamine Ndiaye, head of Oxfam's Africa programme for economic justice.
"The economic collapse is changing the way that people suffer from hunger -- food is available but it simply costs too much for millions of people to afford," he said.
"AU leaders must commit to more investment in small-scale African agriculture to break the current dependency on the global market."
The report noted that while poor countries are spending less on farm schemes than they did 20 years ago, the European Union spent 130 billion dollars on its domestic agriculture programmes while the United States spent 41 billion dollars in 2007.
African leaders open a three-day summit Wednesday with agricultural investments as the official theme, but a raft of political and armed conflicts as well as debate over the future of the African Union look set to dominate the discussions.
Wire
New User?
New User?
buzzed up:
10 seconds ago 2009-06-29T22:18:25-07:00
buzzed up:
13 seconds ago 2009-06-29T22:18:22-07:00
buzzed up:
13 seconds ago 2009-06-29T22:18:22-07:00
buzzed up:
13 seconds ago 2009-06-29T22:18:22-07:00
buzzed up:
31 seconds ago 2009-06-29T22:18:04-07:00
0 comments:
Post a Comment