The White House (Washington, DC)
10 July 2009
The vast majority of the world’s poorest people depend on agriculture for food and household incomes. When world food prices spiked last year, the G8 acted, including by advancing the Global Partnership for Agriculture and Food Security and implementing largely short and medium term measures to reduce hunger, the majority using emergency food aid.
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This approach seem to be the best for Africa and it has been advocated for for a long time. I am glad to see world leaders talking about it seriously. At the just ended AU summit it was agreed that all countries should spend 10% of their budget on agricultural development which I thought was a good decision. If the African initiative is followed and if the promise made today is followed through, Africa should not experience hunger in any form again. The big question is:who will enforce/ensure that countries devote 10% of their budget to Agric and who will make sure that this $20 billion pledged today will actually reach the real farmers? This is why an AU authority with real oversight powers is badly needed.