Last week, African leaders pledged to reprioritise agriculture in their national policies and increase state spending to end hunger across the continent by 2025.
At the conclusion of a meeting at the African Union in Addis Ababa, ministers agreed to take a more holistic approach to tackling hunger. They committed to working with the private sector, farmers’ groups, civil society and academia to increase productivity, while also addressing the underlying causes of malnutrition.
Despite strong economic growth across many parts of Africa over the past 10 years, nearly a quarter of the population – about 240 million people – are undernourished, of whom more than 40% are children under five.
Ministers promised to accelerate efforts to meet the targets of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which emerged from the Maputo agreement in 2003. The programme committed African governments to spend 10% of national budgets on agriculture and increase productivity by 6%. Over the past decade, only 10 countries have achieved these goals. (Read the full post on The Guardian)
Picture courtesy of Barcroft Media/Xinhua/Landov
Blogpost originally posted on the FARA Science Week blog.
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