International Leaders Attend High Level Meeting for Africa's Sustainable Agriculture

A high-level meeting on eradication of hunger in Africa was attended by International and African leaders in Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia from June 30 to July 1, 2013. The meeting, organized by the African Union (AU), the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) among others, has adopted a declaration to end hunger in Africa by 2025. The leaders also reaffirmed their determination to speed up implementation of the Maputo Declaration, which calls for African countries to devote ten percent of their budget to agricultural development.

The results of the initiatives in African countries for agricultural sustainability were also presented in the meeting. Ten of the 54 AU member states have already reached the target of allocating at least ten percent of public investment in agriculture. Among them are Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Malawi, Mali, Niger and Senegal, which have all surpassed the target. Ten countries (Angola, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, the Republic of the Congo, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, Senegal and Tanzania) have exceeded the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) objective of 6 percent growth in agricultural production. Another four have achieved growth of between 5 and 6 percent.

View CGIAR's news release at http://www.cgiar.org/consortium-news/strong-african-partnerships-point-to-a-brighter-future-for-the-continent/.