Cape Town — There will be a "sharp increase" in deaths among young children in Africa unless the international community finds a way of stopping the current rise in food prices, warns a top-level review panel set up to monitor whether the world's leaders are meeting their commitments to Africa.
The number of adults dying from infections diseases will also rise, says the panel in a report launched on Monday.
The panel calls on developed countries to review immediately their biofuel subsidies and on all countries to reassess their agricultural policies. It also puts pressure on delegates at international trade talks to move quickly to implement gains for Africa currently on the negotiating table. In the longer term, it appeals for "significant new investments" to improve agricultural productivity in Africa.
The group, named the "Africa Progress Panel," was launched in Germany ahead of last year's G8 Summit. Its most prominent members include former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Its other African members are former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, activist Graça Machel, Botswana's central banker, Linah Kelebogile Mohohlo, and former Ivorien minister and business leader Tidjane Thiam.
In the report, entitled "Africa's Development: Promises and Prospects," the panel seeks not only to press world leaders to meet their commitments to Africa, but in Kofi Annan's words, "to mobilise resources to deal with new challenges, in particular the crisis in food production."
Reviewing the record of the world's most economically-developed nations, organised in the G8 group of nations, the panel says the G8 has made substantial progress in relieving debt. "However," it continues, "the pledge to double assistance to Africa by 2010 made at the G8 summit at Glenealges [in Scotland] in 2005, is not likely to be fulfilled... The G8 also does not have a timetable for progress toward [this] goal."
The report summarizes gains in Africa in recent years: a 6.6 percent growth rate in 2007, better economic management, more fixed direct investment, more diversified production and a decline in the poverty rate.
But it says the economies of about 20 countries, in which a third of Africans live, have grown by only 2.2 percent a year in the last decade, and the continent is not on course to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty by 2015.
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"On top of... this, rising food prices are affecting tens of millions of Africans, especially those living in urban areas, and are threatening to wipe out gains made over the last several decades.
"The food crisis is a major setback which is creating a major humanitarian emergency. It also requires an immediate and thoughtful response on the best strategy... in order to enable rural populations to take advantage of the new level of agricultural prices and increase food production."
African countries are expected to be among the worst hit by climate change, the report adds.
The projected impact of global warning will cause "unprecedented" losses in agricultural production, "causing huge setbacks in the struggle against poverty and creating millions of impoverished environmental refugees. This will only exacerbate the ongoing trend of rising food prices..."
READ:
A Summary of Findings and Recommendations
What the Report Says on the Food Crisis
