JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- A plan to
improve agriculture in poor countries through private investment won a tepid
welcome Friday from humanitarian agencies, which said the Group of 8 major industrialized
nations should stick to its previous commitment to donate $7.3 billion a year.
The G-8's New Alliance for Food Security and
Nutrition announced Friday to fight global hunger calls on multinational
corporations to invest $3 billion in agriculture in developing countries,
mainly in Africa. But aid agencies questioned whether the money would reach the
small farms that grow most of the continent's food.
With more than half Africa’s population
living on $1.25 a day and a quarter suffering chronic hunger, fostering a
“green revolution” across the continent is seen as the way to lift populations
out of poverty and to provide adequate nutrition.
But global climate change has hit hard in
many African countries, making some farm areas marginal and forcing food prices
up. Africa’s population is expected to double by 2050, increasing the intense
pressure on food resources.
Gregory Adams, spokesman for the humanitarian
and advocacy organization Oxfam,
said one of the key reasons for the lack of agricultural growth in African
countries in recent decades has been a systematic government failure to invest
in rural roads and other infrastructure that would enable farmers to increase
production and get their goods to market.
Oxfam also argues that climate change and food wastage in both
developing and developed nations contributes to the sharp increases in global
food prices that have left many people hungry.
At a 2009 meeting in L'Aquila, Italy, the G-8
promised to provide $22 billion for agricultural development in poor countries
over three years. With just months to go in that agreement, around 44% of
the money has been disbursed.
But aid groups question the new focus on
private investment to deliver the next phase of agricultural development.
"Where is the sustained commitment from
the G-8?" Adams asked. "This problem was caused by several decades of
public disinvestment in agricultural development. You don’t solve it in three
years.
“We want to see the G-8 give a commitment
commensurate with the scale and level of the problem," he said. "We’d
like to see leaders double down on their commitments at L’Aquila and continue
the $7.3 billion a year for the next three years.”
But Kenya’s Calestous Juma, director of
Harvard’s Agricultural Innovation in Africa Project, said the lowered funding
commitment was at least honest. “There’s been a huge gap between public
commitments by Western donors and actual delivery. I’d prefer they underplayed
and delivered than overplayed and not delivered.”
Some agencies questioned whether the shift to
private investment signaled that European Union governments, facing financial
crises of their own, were backing away from promises to end hunger in the
developing world.
But Juma said the investment pledges by large
multinational corporations was a significant vote of confidence in the future
of African agriculture.
“They would not be interested in making a
commitment if they didn’t believe it has a future,” he said in a phone
interview. “That level of commitment by foreign firms also helps to get African
leaders to think about complementary investments in energy, transport,
irrigation and communications. This is the role that the African public sector
can play.”
It would also encourage African businesses to
invest in agriculture.
The barriers to a “green revolution” in
Africa, are myriad: lack of access to improved seeds, fertilizer, irrigation
and markets; lack of storage and refrigeration; poor transportation and
infrastructure; and insufficient bank finance.
The head of the U.S. Agency for International
Development, Rajiv Shah, told journalists Friday that boosting food production
through private investment would raise 50 million people out of poverty and
hunger in the next 10 years.
The alliance announced Friday will include
G-8 and African leaders, aid agencies and multinational companies such as
Unilever, Diageo and Vodafone. The role that farmers will play was less clear,
said Adams.
The central objective is to encourage
small-scale farmers to increase their output and their capacity to get goods to
market.
“In partnership with Africa’s people and
leaders, our goals are to increase responsible domestic and foreign private
investments in African agriculture, take innovations that can enhance
agricultural productivity to scale, and reduce the risk borne by vulnerable
economies and communities,” said a White House statement on the initiative
Friday. “We recognize and will act upon the critical role played by smallholder
farmers, especially women, in transforming agriculture and building thriving
economies.”
In addition to pledges of $3 billion from the
private sector, the alliance would seek another $1.2 billion over the next
three years from donors -- a far cry from the $7.3 billion annually
humanitarian agencies were calling for.
Adams said African countries faced vastly
different challenges among themselves and compared to the rest of the world in
fostering a green revolution. He cautioned against drawing analogies with the
Asian and Latin American green revolutions that spurred economic growth in past
decades.
“We have a different global market and a
different climate, and new technologies and solutions," he said. "A
green revolution in Africa is going to look different to what it looked like 40
or 50 years ago.”
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