International
Hunger Crisis
“The Best Way to Break the Back of Poverty is Through Agriculture”
Yesterday I attended a packed event in the United Kingdom Houses of Parliament to hear His Excellency John Kufuor, Former President of Ghana and 2011 World Food Prize Laureate, speak on the progress his country has made on extreme poverty and hunger.
His Excellency John Kufuor won the World Food Prize in 2011 for his international and domestic leadership on promoting the value of agriculture in reducing poverty. Ghana is now recognised as the first developing country to reach the First Millennium Development Goal: Halve Extreme Hunger and Poverty.
His Excellency explained to the crowd how this remarkable progress was no accident. He recognised the role of Ghanaian debt cancellation, prioritising agriculture, putting in place clear and comprehensive plans of action and receiving donor support from the US Millennium Challenge Corporation in allowing Ghana to achieve this. However it was the economic reforms, a national school nutrition programme strengthened and substantially increased public investment in agriculture that took place under his stewardship that resulted in the greatest benefit. It was this public investment in agriculture that was a major factor behind the halving of hunger and poverty and the increase in Ghana’s gross domestic product, which quadrupled from £2.6 billion in 2000 to £11 billion.
However the former president was keen to stress to the crowd that investment alone did not bring about this change but Ghana’s comprehensive “joined up” agriculture plan. His Excellently told the crowd how providing farmers with education and farming tools isn’t enough without access to markets, and how diversification may not be possible without access to credit and micro finance. The Ghanaian plan considered all of these things in a holistic way, but ensured agriculture was the priority.
This agriculture prioritisation is crucial. Two-thirds of Africa, and in particular the poorest Africans, rely on agriculture for their livelihoods, and therefore, His Excellency said “The best way to break the back of poverty is through agriculture”.
His Excellency John Kufuor’s leadership has helped lift millions out of poverty and hunger, but former present also noted leadership is needed at all levels to tackle hunger and poverty around the world. That is why we call on the G8 and the G20 to maintain their commitments to agricultural development and to align their investments with the plans of African countries. Together by fulfilling these pledges and building local knowledge we can ensure agriculture remains a global priority and so help lift millions out of hunger and poverty.
The fight against famine continues
“Famine outcomes no longer exist in southern Somalia”. These eight words, at the start of a dry assessment released on Friday by the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit in Nairobi, can hardly be considered a cause for celebration. For the last four months, a part of the world had been struck by famine – not just food shortage, or even extreme hunger, but the appalling conditions that meet the strict technical definition of a famine. As ONE insisted, no f-word could be more obscene. Drought may be inevitable, but famine is not – and famine in the 21st century is an obscenity.
So it’s difficult to jump for joy at the news that this famine has come to an end – not least because millions of people in the Horn of Africa are still in desperate need. In Somalia especially, where new concerns about access for humanitarian organisations are emerging, the famine has left people more vulnerable than ever. Like a determined boxer who hauls himself to his feet after taking a beating, the next punch could be the most devastating of all.
And yet, the fact remains that while the world took too long to act on early warnings of crisis in 2011, it did act. Millions of people, from ordinary citizens to policymakers, stepped forward. The global African diaspora demanded action. 400,000 people signed ONE’s petition urging leaders to do more. Leading politicians responded in the European Commission, the African Union, the UK, Sweden and Kenya. Millions of people contributed to the UN’s most successful humanitarian appeal and record public appeals in Britain, Germany and countless other countries. Critically, aid workers from Africa and across the world delivered relief in the most challenging of conditions, and continue to do so right now. All these actions saved lives.
And now this belated but strong effort has been rewarded with a little good fortune. Somalia has enjoyed a better-than-expected harvest. That has pushed food prices down in local markets and there is, for now at least, room to breathe.
Now the obvious question: can we stop this happening again? If political promises made years ago had been kept in the first place, we could have avoided much of the terrible human cost of the last few months. They must be kept now – by African governments who promised to invest ten per cent of their money on agriculture, and by richer nations who made commitments at the G8. And of course it isn’t just about money. More progress was made at last year’s Cannes G20 summit to reduce the volatility in global food prices that has caused havoc in the poorest families’ budgets. That progress needs to be built on urgently.
Together, we managed to force action on this famine over the last few months. Let’s keep that pressure up. We need to build a movement that can keep food and agriculture at the top of the agenda. The US, who host this year’s G8 summit, have a big leadership role. The Horn of Africa’s wealthy neighbours in the Gulf are global players too, well able to do their part. And governments in Europe must keep their promises, starting with the British-led conference on Somalia later this month. Overcoming extreme hunger is not just a fight we must face. It’s one we can win.
What’s ahead in 2012
2012 is a huge year in the fight against extreme poverty. There’s no other way to put it. And I wanted you to be the first to know our plans for the year.
You’re a core part of all that we do as ONE, and we’ll be in touch over the months ahead to ask for your support in:
- Fighting corruption and empowering African civil society, by supporting a European law forcing oil, gas, and mining companies to publish what they pay to governments in developing countries;
- Asking the UK government to keep their promise of spending just 0.7% of national income on international aid by 2013, and enshrine this in law;
- Making sure that our governments deliver on short and long-term solutions to help break the cycle of famine, and
- Stepping up our campaign to see the beginning of the end of AIDS by 2015.
Last year you helped persuade world leaders to fund vaccinations against two of the biggest killers of children under 5 – saving 4 million more children’s lives in 5 years.
Not only that, but G20 leaders heard your voices in calling for short and long-term agricultural solutions to help break the cycle of famine in the Horn of Africa. And that’s only some of what we achieved, together as ONE. Thank you.
Now in this even bigger year, you can do something today to help make our movement even stronger. Please watch our video, share it with friends online and invite them to join us too:
Thanks very much.
What can Canada do RIGHT NOW to help reduce rural poverty and malnutrition?
Despite significant progress in global food security since the beginning of the 2009 L’Aquila Food Security Initiative, many developing countries are not on track to meeting Millennium Development Goal 1 – halving hunger and extreme poverty. However, next week donor countries have a once-in-3 years opportunity to accelerate progress toward this goal through replenishment of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
Watch this video to learn how IFAD-funded farmer field schools are making a difference in the lives of women in Zanzibar
On December 15 -16, IFAD member countries will meet in Rome and make pledges to cover the next 3 years of IFAD operations and lending. ONE supports robust “replenishment” pledges to IFAD for three main reasons: (1) the Fund’s mandate to reduce rural poverty through women, small-scale agriculture and rural development, (2) it is one of the more effective institutions working towards food security, and (3) it is a model of efficiency in international development.
Its mandate. Holding dual status as a UN agency and an international financial institution, IFAD focuses on small-scale farmers exclusively, thus playing a unique role in the global food security architecture. To date, IFAD has empowered more than 370 million rural poor people to make better lives for themselves and leveraged US$19.7 billion in co-financing for its projects. In 2010 alone, IFAD reached 43 million rural poor people.
Its effectiveness. According to a recent report, IFAD has strong monitoring and evaluation, aligns its aid with national development strategies, and performs very strongly in financial accountability and transparency. Additionally, because IFAD projects coordinate multiple donors, IFAD 9 gives donors an avenue to maintain their commitments to strategic coordination and the improvement of multilateral institutions. All this means that IFAD is one of the most effective agencies out there working on agriculture.
Its efficiency. In the Center for Global Development’s 2011 QuODA database, IFAD ranked in the top four aid institutions globally on indicators related to “maximizing efficiency.” Additionally, IFAD has continuously improved its already efficient model of operations. Likewise, the ratio of its overhead expenses has improved recently, shrinking from 16% in 2008 to a projected 12% in 2012. In times of tight donor budgets, countries should prioritize efficiency when investing resources.
For these reasons, the Cannes G20 Summit called on countries for a successful 9th replenishment of IFAD. In ONE’s view, donors should make pledges at or above the levels of those made during its last replenishment. This will ensure that some small-scale farmers continue to get the support they need to farm their way out of poverty.
During the last replenishment (IFAD 8), donors recognized the important role that IFAD plays in global food security, and they made substantial increases in their pledges for IFAD 8. We must keep those up. The leading replenishment pledges in IFAD 8 were:
- U.S. (USD 90 million)
- Italy (EUR 53 million)
- Netherlands (EUR 49 million)
- Sweden (SEK 460 million)
- Canada (CAN 75 million)
Although many donors, like Canada, are currently struggling to meet domestic obligations, they must not forget the world’s poorest, who often live in rural areas and suffer from what Roger Thurow has called the “tragic truism” of hungry farmers, i.e. those that grow food should not go to bed hungry. IFAD can help right this tragic truism and move us closer to meeting MDG 1. Thus, ONE calls on IFAD member countries to replenish IFAD at or above IFAD 8 levels next week in Rome. And we’ll be watching to see if they do.
If you are a Canadian citizen, call or send an email to the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) through Tuesday, December 13th at (819) 997-5456 or info@acdi-cida.gc.ca to voice your support of IFAD, small-scale farmers and rural poverty reduction.
How your support made a difference at the G20
Last week, I was in Cannes at the G20 summit. As you know, media coverage of the meeting was full of the eurozone and Greece, and you might be forgiven for thinking that’s all they discussed. But behind the headlines, something else really important happened. G20 leaders heard your voice, and the voices of more than 400,000 others who backed our Hungry No More campaign.
What’s more, they committed themselves to a number of the short and long-term agricultural solutions we’ve been pushing for to break the cycle of famine. With over 13 million people still in crisis in the Horn of Africa, I wanted to let you know what the G20 have pledged, how you helped achieve this, and what we need to do next.
In their final declaration, the G20 agreed that there is an urgent need to strengthen emergency and long-term responses to food insecurity and that responsible investment in long-term agricultural solutions in the poorest countries is “essential to promote food security and foster sustainable economic growth,” especially when focused on smallholder farmers.
They also pledged to reduce the dangerous impacts of food price volatility and improve the transparency of agricultural commodity markets. That could make a world of difference. Some of the poorest families have to spend as much as 80% of their household budgets on food, so sudden price rises mean real hardship.
More good news is that President Calderon of Mexico – the next Chair of the G20 – announced in Cannes that food security will be one of the G20’s major priorities in 2012. The G20 has made a good start on a framework to fight poverty through agriculture, and now is the time for countries to step up and turn it into reality.
As a ONE member, you are one of our strongest advocates, and we owe you a big thank you. This campaign was just 30 days long, and here’s a snapshot of what you helped achieve globally:
- 409,000 people signed our petition urging G20 leaders to act, and more than 700,000 viewed our ‘F-word’ TV ad on YouTube
- In just one week in the UK, nearly 500 members searched for their Member of Parliament using our new toolkit, leading to a burst of tweets, personalised emails and meetings with MPs. A few members also represented ONE at Downing Street, and handed in our petition
- ONE members in France joined our Paris team to project our campaign videos and a list of petition signers’ names onto the face of the historic Hôtel de Ville
- In Germany, members’ tweets provoked a response from a Government spokesperson assuring that they considered agriculture, food prices and food security important at the G20
- ONE members in the US handed in our petition on Capitol Hill, taking our message right to the heart of the US government.
But this isn’t the end of our Hungry No More campaign. Although we saw progress, the G20 still have a long way to go to make sure these promises are more than just warm words. We didn’t hear enough urgency or commitment to implementation, and the focus could too easily move away from this crucial issue.
Our job is to stop that from happening, and keep up the pressure. So when the smaller G8 meet in Chicago next year, and when the G20 gather again in Mexico, we will need your support to push for concrete results that make world leaders accountable to their commitments.
We’ll be in touch to let you know how you can help, but for now I simply wanted to say: thank you.
Together as ONE, we are making a difference.
PS. If you haven’t seen our Tigray: Then and Now documentary, then please do take a look and share. This is what your support is helping work towards.
ONE final push
As leaders gathered in France today for the G20 Summit of wealthy nations, they brought with them the voice of hundreds of thousands of ONE members.
We’ve been campaigning hard this month to highlight the food crisis in the Horn of Africa and call on world leaders to ensure they break the cycle of famine. Our petition has had a phenomenal response now totalling over 400,000 signatures. So we wanted to make sure our members’ voices were heard loud and clear in the corridors of power.
On Monday as President Sarkozy prepared to leave Paris to host the G20 Summit in the south of France, we broadcast a huge video projection on the side of the city’s iconic Hotel De Ville. The film loop included the powerful celebrity F-word video “famine is the real obscenity”, the message that by then, over 360,000 ONE members had called on leaders to take action, and a scrolling list of members who had signed the petition. Strong media coverage of the event ensured the message was seen far and wide across France.
On Tuesday a group of ONE members joined our European Director delivering the campaign to the UK Government. With the G20 looming and a surge in the number of people signing up, the petition total had jumped to a staggering 400,000 by that afternoon – requiring a large trolley to deliver it!
On Wednesday ONE’s team in Berlin, pictured here in their “Nicht Mehr Hungrig” (“Hungry No More”) t-shirts outside the Chancellery Building, handed in the petition to the German Government. Along with pressure from our staff and members across the United States, this ensured the leading G20 powers have felt the pressure to act going in to today’s Summit.
We’ll be updating here about the Summit’s progresses, and stay tuned for a post early next week giving an overall assessment.
Win a chance to shape ONE’s campaigning
Would you like to help decide what ONE does in the future? I’m delighted to announce the first in a series of competitions to win a place on ONE’s new European campaign advisory group.
We’re setting this up to recognise that the success of ONE is built on our members – a growing movement of 2.5 million people from around the world raising their voices to demand action. The advisory group will include several members, whose valuable input will help shape our future campaign activities.
To launch this initiative, we are inviting UK and German members to take action with our Hungry No More campaign aimed at your government, and then post what you did in the comments section below. Those taking the most actions, who get the best response from a campaign target, or think of the most interesting advocacy idea and can explain what you did, could win a place on our advisory group.
Take action now at: www.one.org/international/actnow/mptoolkit
Good luck and don’t forget to let us know what action you took and what response you got. I’m really looking forward to seeing your results!
The rankings: Who is most committed to reducing hunger?
Lawrence Haddad is the Director of the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. He is an economist and his main research interests are at the intersection of poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition. This blog post was reposted from the Development Horizons blog.
Last Sunday was World Food Day.
It is usually a time when lots of measures of hunger are updated and released. All of these measures use an out of date methodology for assessing hunger (based on food balance sheets which are estimates of food availability, not access or utilization) but that is another story.
More importantly World Food Day is a time to reflect on — and redouble — efforts to reduce hunger around the world.
But how do we know who is taking hunger reduction seriously?
It is vital to separate hunger outcomes from hunger reduction efforts and effort has to be contextualized by the resources and capacity available to a country.
The Institute of Development Studies (IDS), together with NGO partners, has developed a Hunger Reduction Commitment Index (HRCI) to try to measure who is making the biggest effort to reduce hunger. Using secondary data (9 variables covering anti-hunger spending, policies and legislation) we ranked 22 developing countries and 21 donor countries.
This is the kind of thing the FAO should be doing, and I hope they eventually take it over, but for now we are committed to developing it further.
The index ranking is still a draft (it is being peer reviewed) but the initial results are striking:
1. The top countries are Malawi (best), Guatemala, Brazil, Senegal with Ghana and Ethiopia tied at 5th. The bottom are Guinea Bissau (worst) Zambia, China, Nepal, with Lesotho and Bangladesh tied at 16th. China is the big surprise, coming in at 19th. It is a surprise because it usually ranks at the top of indices about who is doing well on hunger, but once we take out its hunger reduction numbers, the explicit commitment to hunger reduction does not show up in policies, spending or legislation. Of course if you have that level of hunger reduction (fueled by economic growth), explicit commitment probably does not matter so much. That is why it is important to cross-reference commitment with hunger levels and resources available.
2. Once you cross-reference the commitment levels with hunger, wealth, administrative capacity and voice and accountability scores, several off-diagonal situations are highlighted: high hunger and low commitment (notably Guinea Bissau, Zambia, Bangladesh, but also Nepal and Lesotho), low wealth and high commitment (e.g. Malawi, Ethiopia, and Tanzania), high administrative capacity and low commitment (e.g. Lesotho and China) and low public accountability and voice but high commitment (Ethiopia). This contextualization makes the HRCI more than an index, but helps it play a diagnostic role, guiding action from different stakeholders (governments, civil society, donors) to where their efforts can make the biggest difference.
3. On the donor countries, Denmark does best, with Switzerland worst. The UK comes in at joint 5th with France and Norway. South Korea, the new kid on the donor block, comes in at 12th — higher than Japan (13) Canada (14), the US (18).
We also collected primary data on 10 indicators in 3 countries (Zambia, Bangladesh and the UK) from in country “expert” panels (of around 30 people in each location, selected for as wide a range and balance of perspectives as possible) to give those governments a steer as to where these expert groups think they are relatively strong and relatively weak. For example in the UK the panel felt the UK government was strong on using evidence to inform policy but weak on working in a whole of government way.
I am a fan of relative rankings. I believe they provide positive motivation for action. Our hope is that civil society will find this index to be a useful addition to their toolkit in terms of putting pressure on governments to do something about hunger rather than simply talk about it.
We are developing the next phase of this work and will continue refining the index, updating the secondary data scores, updating the primary data collection while expanding the number of countries, working with civil society partners in country to help them use the index to support mobilization against hunger and to set up a baseline for evaluation of the index.
The full draft report can be found here.
Progress – Thanks to you
Thanks to the action you took on fighting famine in the Horn of Africa, world leaders are responding to public pressure and coming forward to help stop the starving.
220,000 supporters who signed our petition calling on governments to provide full, immediate funding to the food crisis. Since our campaign launch two months ago, an additional $700 million has been committed for the crisis, and a further $970m promised, including increases from Australia, Germany, the European Union, African countries and others.
This past Saturday, our CEO addressed the UN Emergency Summit and submitted the petition you signed. “While drought may be act of nature, famine is not. More than 200,000 of our members have added their voices to a global petition calling for world leaders to act now,” he declared.
(ONE CEO Michael Elliott addresses the United Nations meeting)
But we cannot lose momentum. ONE will continue to campaign on this vital issue. We’ll increase our pressure on leaders of wealthy countries when they meet at the G-20 Summit, demanding that they keep their promises to ensure people across Africa are hungry no more. Watch out for this new phase of the campaign being launched next week with some high profile supporters.
Famine in Somalia: Never again, again
This blog post originally appeared on AfricanArguments.org
It’s over a month since famine was declared in Somalia and alarm bells clearly rung about serious food shortages across Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia. 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are in desperate need of food, clean water and basic sanitation and we are all asking: how can this be happening again? In this past month we have seen differing responses locally, regionally and globally to the crisis. Already there are lessons we must learn about how to stop famine happening again.
As Richard Dowden noted previously on this blog there are many political factors that complicate the situation in Somalia. Any lasting solution will require a regional roadmap out of the Somali cycle of failed statism. Eritrea and others must be brought around a table with other regional governments, and representatives from wide cross section of Somali civil society. Maybe this famine will reenergise the too often stalled process. However politics is not the only factor here and there are other lessons to learn.
The response from the international community has been slow. As my colleague Adrian Lovett explained, in a recent Huffington Post blog, leaders such as the UK, US and Sweden have made substantial contributions to the appeal but other governments languish behind. The UN appeal remains $1 billion short of what is needed. Traditional European donors such as France and Germany are not pulling their weight. Nor are many of the Gulf States who have tremendous wealth generated from high oil prices and could fill the appeal gap with ease. That these global players drag their feet while children die is shameful, though the recent pledge from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to the Somalia appeal is a step in the right direction.
The response from Africa has been mixed. Last month ONE and Africa Gathering hosted an informal discussion with African diaspora leaders and international NGOs about the adequacy of the response to the crisis. The participants called for African leaders to step up more to lead the response. African countries and institutions including South Africa, the African Union (AU) and Kenya are contributing and yesterday’s AU pledging conference was unprecedented and raised a decent sum – though some nations could still do more. Donations from many African governments – Nigeria for example – or wealthy individuals have been modest. Africa has a number of billionaires these days as the advocates of the ‘Africa rising’ narrative rightly keep reminding us. African civil society also has a crucial role to play. Influential figures, not just from faith communities but also from the artistic, musical and sports world have real sway over the youth. The group AfricansAct4Africa is already bringing together many musicians and artists to bring attention to this issue, and leaders like Youssou N’Dour and Somalia’s own hip hop artist K’Naan are leading a new generation of African artists in this effort. This is a hugely positive development.
This is an assessment of the emergency response but if we are to stop starvation returning we must find long-term solutions. The famine early warning system should have been noted earlier higher up the political food chain. Plainly it is media attention that gets political attention, and the media only tune in once the images are shocking enough – which is too late. Any review of this crisis has to factor in the role of the international media as watchdog in these situations and help them play a more proactive role. I could imagine an emergency-prevention TV team charged with finding ways to tell the stories of slow-burning crises for prime time, in ways the audience won’t tune out but before the children start dying. This may seem far-fetched but it’s a creative challenge many in the media industries might relish. Call it a global community service for recovering media hacks.
Long-term investment in agriculture is also vital. At L’Aquila in 2009, G8 leaders promised $22 billion to agricultural development but with just one year to go until the deadline only a fifth of the money has been delivered. African governments also made pledges at Maputo in 2003 to invest 10% of their budgets on agriculture. So far only seven African nations have kept the promise, including Ethiopia. This is part of the reason why the situation in Ethiopia while very serious, is not as bad as it could be, or as bad as it was back in the early 1990s or mid 1980s. If we are to prevent future droughts becoming future famines long term investment in farming and food security infrastructure across the continent is essential.
The famine we see today was avoidable but it could also have been even worse. While it is too late for tens of thousands of children, there are hundreds of thousands more who need our help right now. We can’t just blame politics for their fate while sitting by and doing nothing. We must deal with the politics embedded into the way we deal with the crisis – the local issues that turn drought into famine, the regional complexities that make response slow and difficult, and the global neglect that means promises are rarely kept. We must learn these lessons and in the name of those who have died, declare this time for real: never again.
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About the Blog
The International ONE Blog is a daily log of the anti-poverty movement. The site is operated by ONE staff, with guest contributions from ONE volunteers, members and allies.
The content of each post and each comment represents the views of that author and does not necessarily reflect the views of ONE. ONE does not support or oppose any candidate for elected office, and any post expressing support or opposition for a candidate is not endorsed by ONE.
TAGS: Agriculture, Ghana, Hunger Crisis, Millennium Development Goals, UK