AU, Others Partner On Eradication Of Hunger

The African Union Commission (AUC), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Instituto Lula of Brazil, have announced a joint effort to help eradicate hunger and undernourishment in Africa.

The decision was reached at a meeting attended by AUC Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva, and former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Honorary President of the Institute bearing his name.

The effort brings together the AUC’s leadership, FAO’s technical expertise and renewed commitment to fight hunger as well as the political backing of former Brazilian President Lula Da Silva.

Knowledge and support from other international, regional and national partners will also go a long way in enhancing this new partnership.

During the meeting at the headquarters of the AUC in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the three parties agreed to convene a high-level meeting with African and International Leaders on “New, unified approaches to end hunger in Africa’’.

The meeting will be held in Addis Ababa between March 4 and 5, 2013.

Dlamini-Zuma, Lula da Silva and Graziano da Silva agreed on the importance of focusing efforts on strengthening the participation

of women in agriculture and food systems as well as investing in children and youth.

“Women are very much involved in agriculture, therefore, our programmes should take into account gender and youth participation,” Dr Dlamini-Zuma said.

“We also agreed to work together on one of the AU’s flagship initiative, the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), to promote infrastructure in the continent.

“Without infrastructure we can never reach our full potential in development.’’

The partnership will be based on the shared vision that a hunger-free Africa is possible and that concerted efforts can achieve tangible improvements in food security and nutrition reversing the rise in hunger that has seen the number of undernourished people in the continent increase from 175 million in the early 1990s to 239 million today.

Although many challenges remain in the African continent, Dlamini-Zuma, Lula da Silva and Graziano da Silva noted that there are many positive examples of countries making significant progress in food security and nutrition.

Their success as well as other positive examples, such as Brazil’s, can be used to learn and build on what works, they said.

The leaders agreed to attention on on the need to scale up and build on existing successful initiatives and to promote knowledge-sharing between countries among other areas.

They also stressed that high-level dialogue needed to be facilitated to reinforce political commitment in the fight against hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition.