From: senaey fethi (senaeyfethi@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Jul 28 2009 - 21:21:39 EDT
International aid: Feeding Africa
Editorial The Guardian, Wednesday 29 July 2009
Slowly the great World Bank tanker has been redirected to a new course. As much of sub-Saharan Africa faces drought, a failed harvest and hunger, the organisation has come to recognise the urgency of investment in global agricultural productivity and, after two decades of neglect, the importance of governments in delivering it. At the same time, this month's G8 summit promised $20bn specifically to support food security. Sceptics wonder how much is new money and look at the foot-dragging on the Gleneagles promises of 2005 to boost aid in order to reach next year's millennium development goals.The question now, as world recession eats into aid budgets, is how to get the most out of the money that is available.
Previous failings are not exclusively the fault of the World Bank, which has remained the largest investor in African agriculture. But on its own evaluation, its faith in market-based solutions was based on a misreading of the realities on the ground. At least two-thirds of food in Africa is grown on farms of less than a hectare, often run by a woman with no access to improved seed varieties or fertiliser. Boosting the economy through investment in health and education was meant to provide the impetus for private agricultural investment that has only happened on the urban fringes where there is access to markets. Rural Africa – typified by communities like Katine, in north-east Uganda, where the Guardian is involved in a development partnership with Amref and Farm-Africa – remain too remote and too poor to create markets on their own.
But where governments have invested with subsidised seed and fertiliser, the results can be spectacular. For the past three years Malawi has been developing a programme distributing subsidised seed and fertiliser to its poorest farmers, more than doubling productivity in a single year. The government is committed to sustained investment delivered in a manner that is responsive to criticism (allegations of corruption led to the introduction of vouchers and a new system of allocation) and to local needs, while local radio carries farming advice (as The Archers once did on the BBC). The development economist Jeffrey Sachs argues that governments should control the G8 billions. But that risks excluding the practical experience of small, local organisations and NGOs with long experience of working at village level. It is independent voices that make it more likely that the most rural communities, often the least influential voice in government circles, get
support. Growing more food is only part of the answer but, as a billion people feel the effect of high prices and climate change, it is the part that matters most.