African Leaders Meet, Proffer Solution To Eradicate Hunger Crisis In The Continent

Eradicate Hunger Crisis

African countries have expressed their commitments towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2030 by accelerating actions to end poverty and hunger in Africa.

On Equatorial Guinea’s capital island of Malabo, agriculture ministers from across Africa met between 11th April and 14th April, 2022 to discuss solutions to the growing hunger crisis, at a conference convened by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The 32nd Session of the FAO Regional Conference for Africa (ARC32) opened with a call from the FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Africa Abebe Haile-Gabriel to learn lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic to trigger urgent action at national level.

“Collectively, we have learned to do things differently, to go digital like never before, and to quickly forge new partnerships to overcome threats. That same agility and spirit of collaboration is needed now for the silent pandemic of poverty, hunger and undernourishment and extreme vulnerabilities to shocks in Africa, he said.

62 Ministers from 54 African countries participated in the hybrid conference, as well as representatives from observer countries, the African Union, donor organizations, civil society and the private sector. Hundreds of delegates also join the Zoom sessions and webcast.

“We have to work together to exchange experiences to face these difficulties together,” said H.E. Francisca Eneme Efua, Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Forests and Environment of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea and Chairperson of ARC32.

“This conference gives us an outstanding opportunity to deal with the issues facing Africa. I ask all delegations to ‘put everything on the table’ so we can come up with ministerial consensus,” she further said.

Sky-rocketing global food prices and strains on food supply because of the Russia/Ukraine crisis are likely to push more people into hunger in Africa.

In an opinion piece published in the lead up to the Conference FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu warned that time is running out. “Without extraordinary efforts by every African country, it will be difficult to meet the aspirations and targets of the Sustainable Development Goals,” he wrote.
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The core of the discussion was the recovery from the deepening hunger crisis. It was identified that before the COVID-19 pandemic, there were more than 280 million undernourished people in Africa. In 2020, the region recorded the sharpest rise in the prevalence of undernourishment – covering 21 percent of the population which is more than double that of any other region. A devastating drought in the Horn of Africa has brought many rural families to their knees, and triggered warnings of potential famine in Somalia. Acute food insecurity in the Sahel and West Africa almost quadrupled between 2019 and 2022 –jumping from 10.8 million people in 2019 to 40.7 million people in 2022, with millions more at-risk of slipping into crisis levels of hunger.

Underpinning the discussions is the FAO Strategic Framework 2022-2031, which supports the 2030 SDG Agenda through the transformation to MORE efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agrifood systems for better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life, leaving no one behind.

Experience-sharing session among the participating countries on the solutions to the identified setbacks, and a launch with the African Union of new investment guidelines on youth in agrifood systems are part of the highlights of the conference.

The Regional Conference is FAO’s highest governing body in Africa. Close to 800 delegates participated in the four day event, plus those following the discussions through the live stream. Other participants included representatives from 34 inter-governmental organizations such as African Union and ECOWAS. Also, more than 30 civil Society and academic organizations, and 28 private sector representatives participated.

On the sidelines of the conference, the FAO Director-General visited a project site in Santiago de Baney in the host country, where he participated in the inauguration of demonstration plots that will serve as field schools and to allow small farmers to experiment, innovate and test good production practices. The project is funded by the Government of Equatorial Guinea, while FAO provided technical assistance to strengthen the agricultural extension system of the ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Forests and Environment.

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