Africa’s Promise to Support Agriculture Not Kept

Despite a promise made in Mozambique in 2003 to allocate 10 percent of their budgets to agriculture by 2008, many African countries have not achieved that goal. At that time also, government leaders sought to support the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP), an African-led initiative by the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the African Union (AU). These measures were suppose to help African countries reach the first Millennium Development Goal of cutting poverty and hunger in half by 2015.

Of Africa’s 53 countries, only seven met the target - Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, Malawi, and Niger. Cris Muyunda, senior agricultural advisor for the COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) Secretariat, says this negligence has increased African vulnerability to drought, hunger, and malnutrition despite the continent's large land and water resources.

The analysis by the International Food Policy Research Institute is available at  http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/newsletters/IFPRIForum/if200810.asp