|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
  |
 |
  |
This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
"Partnership to Cut Hunger in Africa" Conference
Speech by USAID Administrator Andrew S. Natsios
Loy Henderson Auditorium, Department of State
Wednesday June 27, 2001
Thank you, Peter, for your introduction. Let me say a word about Peter McPherson. As USAID's Administrator, as President of Michigan State, as co-chair of the Partnership to Cut Hunger in Africa, you have shown a longstanding and deeply held commitment to fighting hunger and poverty around the world.
The draft framework that Peter laid out for addressing hunger and poverty in Africa has given us a lot to think about in terms of problems and strategies.
I am also honored to address some of Africa's most courageous and committed leaders here today. Your Excellencies, your presence at this conference shows your dedication to helping your people and to agricultural development. As Secretary Powell has said, the United States is committed to Africa: because Americans believe in helping others through the challenges of development, and because it makes sense to protect our own economic and security interests.
Congressman Kolbe, we appreciate your presence at this conference, and I look forward to working with you to address these important issues.
Let me take a few minutes to summarize my views on this topic.
The bottom line is, we have been losing the war against poverty and hunger in sub-Saharan Africa.
Chronic hunger is still a world-wide problem. But in other regions, there is progress in food security. The latest estimates by the U.S. Department of Agriculture are that, outside Africa, the number of chronically hungry people will drop from 465 million to 255 million by 2010.1
But in Africa, those same estimates indicate that the number of hungry in Africa will increase by about 10 million a year over the next decade. By 2010, 435 million Africans could face severe food insecurity.
There is no one reason why. Africa faces a number of serious and interrelated difficulties. Natural disasters from drought to flooding have destroyed agriculture and infrastructure. Conflicts in many parts of Africa have cost thousands of lives and disrupted food production and access. Too few Africans have access to real economic opportunity.
On top of this, Africa faces the incredible threat of AIDS. The threat of AIDS to food security is severe: in the hardest-hit African countries, there are estimates that these countries will lose between 13 percent and 23 percent of their labor forces over the next 20 years. The result will be severe farm labor shortages - at a time when we need to increase food production in Africa.
Unfortunately, as Africa has struggled, international support for agricultural development has faded. Since the mid-1980s, funding from international donors for agricultural research and development has declined by 80 percent.
In the mid-1980s, USAID put more than a billion dollars a year into agriculture activities - by 1997, that figure had dropped to $214 million. We've managed to increase our support for agricultural to more than $300 million this year - but still a far cry from the levels of past decades. That cut was due partly to severe reductions in USAID's overall budget - and also to increasing U.S. focus on other priorities, like promoting democracy, protecting the environment, increasing health and child survival efforts.
Many African governments also decreased their spending for agriculture and rural infrastructure. In part these cuts reflected declining donor support, but they also reflected responses to failed policies. Price support programs turned out to provide disincentives rather than incentives to farmers. Fertilizer support programs were subject to inefficiencies and corruption.
Obviously the challenges are incredible. I believe that, together, we can reverse the tide. There is no magic bullet - the causes of food insecurity are complex, and we must respond on a number of fronts. But we are not starting from scratch - we have decades of experience to draw upon in the United States and in Africa. We know what works. The key is to build partnerships that help us coordinate our efforts, maximize our resources, and ultimately to give more people access to adequate supplies of food.
We in USAID intend to fight for a new U.S. Government focus to reduce poverty and hunger in Africa. We will shortly create a new central bureau of Economic Growth, Trade, and Agriculture to focus largely on agriculture. We have several specific goals for our USAID approach to this challenge:
- Improve nutrition and diet of poor families.
- Eliminate famine.
- Dramatically cut absolute poverty.
- Reduce income disparities between rural and urban families.
I believe that to accomplish these goals, we must agree on some basic principles upon which to base our strategies:
The first principle is: Learn from our past mistakes - and our successes. I already mentioned the fertilizer and price support programs - they did not work once, let's make sure they don't have a chance to not work again.
On the other hand we have great models upon which to build. For example: in the early 1970s, the Sahel region was hit by a terrible drought that created one of the worst famine conditions ever faced in Africa. The United States led a multi-donor effort for rehabilitation and long term agricultural development of the region. The donors and African governments formed the Club des Amis du Sahel. Their coordinated program was implemented over 20 years. The result: though the Sahel still faces periodic droughts, massive famines no longer occur. The Sahel effort is a classic example of a sustained, concerted, coordinated strategy and partnership with Africans that overcame a major threat to food security.
The second principle is: Get the economic policy framework right. We know that science-based, market-based economic policies give farmers and processors incentives to produce. Case in point: Malian farmers have increased the productivity of rice over the last 15 years to levels that were unthinkable in 1980. USAID and other donors supported policy and institutional reforms in the mid-1980s that increased incentives to invest in more intensive production and processing. Farmers were able to use high-yielding rice varieties developed by the International Rice Research Institute. Land tenure reforms led to improved management of both agricultural and natural resources. The result: rice production in the inner delta region of Mali doubled between 1993 and 2000.
The third principle is: Make use of the latest agricultural research. We know that agricultural technology can increase productivity - if we ensure that rural farmers have access to appropriate technology.
For example: Starting in 1989, cassava mosaic disease cost Ugandan farmers about $400 million over 10 years; 40 percent of their plantings of this staple succumbed to the disease. USAID and other donors, working with local agricultural associations and the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, responded to the crisis with basic research and then widespread distribution of disease-resistant seeds. The result was remarkable - cassava production in target areas increased from not even 1,000 tonnes in 1997, to 342,000 tonnes in 1999. That dramatic recovery increased both the food supply and the market value of cassava for poor Ugandans.
Another example: Peter McPherson's Michigan State University manages the Bean and Cowpea Collaborative Research Support Program, which is a staple for poor people in Western Africa. The University's research and training programs, in conjunction with its American and African partners, has led to dramatic increases in cowpea production in Senegal.
The fourth principle is: Focus on scale. We won't succeed by trying to make specific communities, even specific countries, food secure. The fact is, famine or severe hunger in one country causes displacement and economic effects that hurt surrounding nations. The Sahel model I spoke of earlier shows that regional, coordinated approaches work to cut hunger, and I intend to focus on such large-scale initiatives.
So far, I've talked mostly about agriculture. But as you all know, to solve hunger in Africa, we must work beyond the agriculture sector to address poverty and hunger in Africa.
Together, we must fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The United States is the world leader in responding to HIV/AIDS. As Secretary Powell said in New York this week, President Bush has put the full force of his cabinet behind the U.S. response to this crisis. Only an integrated approach makes sense. An approach that emphasizes prevention and public education. But it also must include treatment, care for orphans, measures to stop mother-to-child transmission, affordable drugs, delivery systems and infrastructure, medical training. And of course, it must include research into vaccines and a cure.
With the support of African leaders, our efforts work. Again, I applaud the courage of the African leaders here today - you have been willing to speak out about the threat of this disease, to challenge taboos and change traditions.
In Uganda and Senegal - Africa's most heralded successes in stemming the spread of HIV/AIDS -- political and economic empowerment of women and girls has been instrumental to changing risky sexual practices.
In Uganda, USAID's partnership with the Government was instrumental in reducing the prevalence of HIV in young men in urban areas by 50 percent, and nationally by one-third. In Senegal, USAID's partnership with the Government on early, comprehensive HIV intervention programs have helped stop the AIDS epidemic in its tracks, keeping the infection rate to less than 2 percent.
Together, we must reduce conflict. We cannot improve food security in Africa without addressing current conflicts and preventing future ones. One civil war in one year can do as much damage as an earthquake. Infrastructure is destroyed, hospitals and schools are demolished and educated people - those who are most mobile - flee and don't return. To address the increase in conflict and tension, USAID will undertake a major new conflict prevention, management, and resolution initiative.
Together, we must accelerate economic growth. Reducing poverty and accelerating economic growth are essential to African stability and access to food.
We create opportunity by building the agriculture sector. In Africa, agriculture-led growth must be a fundamental part of any national development strategy - 70 percent or more of the poor live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for all or part of their incomes. Increasing incomes in agriculture also generates employment and income increases in other sectors.
We create opportunity by promoting microenterprise development.
We create opportunity by helping African countries become real partners in the global trading system. USAID is the world's leader in helping African countries develop the expertise needed to participate in trade negotiations and fulfill the responsibilities of trade agreements. Although domestic markets will continue to be important, regional and global markets offer opportunities for Africa to export cash crops and other products to markets where demand will increase their incomes.
We create opportunity by educating Africans - particularly women and girls. The famous Ghanaian scholar Dr. James Emmanuel Kwegyir-Aggrey once said, "If you educate a man you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman you educate a family."2 Women are both food and care providers, so the most effective way of improving access to food and nutrition is to help women do a better job. Educated women also have more opportunities to increase their own productivity -- especially important in these times when HIV/AIDS has made every individual's contribution important.
From personal experience, I know how hard we will have to work. But I also know that we can succeed.
Let me tell you a story.
On one of my first trips to Africa as USAID's Director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance in 1989, I visited the town of Mugalama in Mozambique. There was a civil war raging. The town was surrounded by one of the warring factions, and cut off from food supplies; the agricultural system had been virtually destroyed. As we went from hut to hut, we realized the village was dying. Most of the families were too weakened from hunger to even move out of their huts. I used my authority to begin an emergency airlift that day, to try to save some of the villagers.
I visited the same area after Mozambique's peace agreement had been signed. I saw large-scale agricultural reconstruction programs with improved seed varieties, better grain storage, and new roads to export surpluses - supported by USAID funding, but implemented by American and Mozambican partners. The whole region had been transformed from desolation into agricultural bounty. The people of Mugulama had turned terrible suffering into great triumph. It is a testament to the African spirit, and a model for Africa's future.
So - we know what works to address poverty and reduce hunger. This Partnership is one effort to ensure that we work together toward common goals and maximize our resources.
The Partnership to Cut Hunger in Africa will be crucial to bringing our experience, resources, and ideas into alliances with others for shared objectives. The Partnership already has remarkably broad representation from the academic communities in the U.S. and Africa as well as from political leadership in Africa. It has taken a thoughtful approach, with extended African consultations, in developing its approach.
I look forward to working with this Partnership, with you, to exert the renewed and concerted leadership needed to cut poverty and hunger in Africa. The challenges are enormous, but with the courage and commitment shown by the leaders here at this conference, we will prevail.
Notes:
1 USDA Food Security Assessment, February 2001.
2 Attributed to the Ghanaian scholar Dr. James Emmanuel Kwegyir-Aggrey (1875-1927).
 |
|||
Last Updated on: January 02, 2009 |
