The energy needs of a country are rarely mentioned in terms of calories, yet they fuel a nation's human resource.
In sub-Sahara Africa, according to the Africa Human Development Report 2012 themed, Towards a Food Secure Future, "more than one in four Africans is undernourished, and food insecurity (inability to consistently acquire enough calories and nutrients for a healthy and productive life) is pervasive."
Closer home in the East African Community, according to The State of East Africa 2012 Report, individuals in most countries in the region, including Rwanda, have been described as having "consumed a little less than 2,060 calories per day" on average. Only Uganda consumed above that figure.
To be sure, calorie needs vary greatly, depending on age, weight, activity level, metabolic rate and other factors. The East Africans do not seem too badly off.
On the other hand, the Africa Human Development Report observes that misguided policies, weak institutions and failing markets are the main causes of sub-Saharan Africa's food insecurity. It adds that this is most evident in households and communities, where unequal power relations trap vulnerable groups such as subsistence farmers, the landless poor, many women and children - all of whom endure in a vicious cycle of deprivation, food insecurity and low human development.
The importance of agriculture on the continent is obvious, and cannot be gainsaid. For most Africans, especially the poor, the report emphasises, agriculture not only determines food security, but "is also the wellspring of income and work, core elements of human development. In turn, earnings and employment bolster food security by enabling access to sufficient quantities of nutritious food."
Nutrition or the calories are key in fueling development that is able to sustain itself. The report is, therefore, also emphatic that food security should be leveraged by empowering people to make their own choices and by building resilience in the face of shocks. It means preserving people's food entitlements-the income, market structures, institutional rules and governance that enable the poor to buy and trade food in fair markets.
It also means reinforcing essential human capabilities in health and education. Focusing policies on four areas - agricultural productivity, nutrition, resilience and empowerment - can unleash a dynamic virtuous cycle of food security and human development.
One of the key messages in the Africa Human Development Report, therefore, is that sustainable increases in agricultural productivity and better nutrition are the drivers of food-secure growth and human development.
"The argument is straightforward," the report confidently explains, noting that more productive agriculture will build food security by increasing food availability and lowering food prices, thus improving access. Higher productivity can also raise the incomes of millions of smallholder farmers, elevating living standards and improving health and education, thus expanding people's capabilities.
Through science, the report says, technology and the diffusion of innovation greater agricultural productivity can also enable better stewardship of the environment. Sound nutrition links food security to human development. Well-nourished people exercise their freedoms and capabilities in different domains - the essence of human development - and, completing the cycle, will be inclined to demand food security from their leaders.
The message in the Africa Human Development Report 2012 should be heeded by leaders on the continent, as it can only bode well for an Africa that is only just beginning to take off.
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Once again another report recommending changes and policies and promissing results. We are too far into the Millenium Development Goal target date of 2015 to be evaluating reading reports about why people are still hungry. They are still hungry because they have no food. You can take all the reports on food security stack them six feet high and you still can't make soup. When the people start demanding food instead of reports people will stop letting the opportunists take take the hundreds of millions and billions of dollars earmarked for food security and come back with nothing but excuses and reports instead of food. The people are hungry because they are spending money on reports and models instead of on programs that actually produce food.
The internationally acclaimed outreach mission of SCEI-1BLOOD has over a decade of documented food security accomplishments in the ECOWAS region of West Africa. Food - Not - Reports, Projections and models. There was over 6.2 million bushels of rice in it's micro-model of food security in 2010. Beginning in 1999 in Sierra Leone during the Civil War which ended in 2002, 1BLOOD International has proven that it can be done without government handouts and restrictions, without genetically modified seeds or fertilizers and without machines. If those that make the speeches are not willing to get out in the field with the farmers and do what it takes to bring the crops in, the world need not look to them when the hour grows dark for food. Food does not come from global governance, reports or summits. Food comes from men and women who are wiling to do what it takes to grow food.
The truth is out. A Decade of Documentation of Food Security Accomplishments is available online on YouTube : A Closer Look - 1BLOOD.
Go see for yourself. You can SEE THE RICE.
You can start with some FOOD SECURITY REALITIES http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2C1B774D5E604F94&feature=view_all
And if you're ready you can come and SEE THE RICE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_AlaWoZYNo
Reports or Rice - Which will YOU eat?
Let me state for the record that the above commentor is a member of a destructive bible based cult and has never been to aftica in his life, nor has he seen a single 1BLOOD rice farm. All he has seen are videos of his CEO standing in rice fields with 1blood stickers and signs all over the place. Not a shred of evidence has been officially verified that these fields are his, or that 1BLOOD has made any positive changes, besides massive crowds of worshippers praising the CEO Dr. Kenneth D. Jackson. Those communities are still hungry and the only people benefiting long term is 1BLOOD leadership. SCEI-1BLOOD is a fraud and a con that abuses its supposed "beneficiaries" by lying to them, conning them out of land and resources and stealing their money before moving on and abandoning them. The reason people dont have food is because they sign treaties, listen to fools like foreign governments of kenneth D. Jackson and don't grow it themselves. They dont need a government and they don't need 1BLOOD. They just need to work together as communities to establish their own food production.