1 December 2008
Doha — Mozambican Prime Minister Luisa Diogo on Sunday presented the country's strategy for achieving a green revolution, and its Food Production Plan of Action, at the UN Conference on Development Finance in Doha.
Diogo was chairing a high level panel dealing with food security and sources of funding for agriculture.
She explained to her audience how Mozambique is acting to reduce its deficit in wheat, rice and some root crops, and is trying to centre its development strategy on the rural districts.
She stressed the decision to allocate an annual sum of at least seven million meticais (about 285,000 US dollars) from the state budget to each of the 128 districts. "This funding is to create new jobs and to boost the production of food for consumption and for sale", she said.
Diogo said that currently between seven and eight per cent of the Mozambican state budget is allocated to agriculture. The government's goal is to increase this to 10 per cent in 2009, thus meeting the target set by the African Union's Maputo Declaration of 2003.
At this panel, the European Union announced that it will increase to over a billion euros (about 1.26 billion US dollars) its aid for food production programmes in developing countries. Two individual EU members, Spain and Ireland, also announced increases in aid for the same purpose.
"The fruits of this conference are beginning to be felt", remarked Diogo in reaction to these announcements.
African leaders argue that with increased funding it will be possible to boost the yields from African agriculture. Currently the average productivity of agriculture in Africa is 1.3 tonnes per hectare - which compares with 5.5 tonnes in Europe and 6.5 tonnes in the United States.
The panel on agriculture also reviewed the work done by a working group set up by UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon as an immediate reaction to the sharp price rises which triggered the global food crisis earlier this year. The report from that group called for joint action between developed an developing countries to solve the crisis.
Diogo said that the major problem faced in attempts to solve global problems is the dispersal of effort, with each country acting individually, to the detriment of a joint approach that would be speedier and more effective.
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