Head of the NEPAD Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme
(CAADP) Mr. Martin Bwalya, has said that CAADP framework was set up
to curb food insecurity on the continent.
He
made this assertion to a high-level
meeting of African and International Leaders in Addis Ababa, the capital of
Ethiopia, recently tagged “Toward African Renaissance: Renewed Partnership for
Unified Approach to End Hunger in Africa by 2025 within the CAADP
Framework.”
NaijaAgroNet gathered that Bwalya told his
audience that by design, NEPAD and CAADP are political response to the poverty
and food insecurity challenge, noting that chronic food insecurity and hunger
is critical hindrance to socio-economic growth and development of the continent
and could amount to restlessness in the geopolitics call Africa.
He
pointed that that it was the Compelling context that led to setting up of NEPAD
and CAADP respectively.
As at 2000,
Bwalya informed NaijaAgroNet that an estimated 40 per cent
of people in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) lived below the poverty line of less
than a Dollar per day. While the income and human poverty saw to the rise of
social and economic inequality, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report
of 2002, which stated that Africa is the only continent that has its 1/3 of its
entire population living in chronic hunger.
He
also noted that between 1980 and year 2000, Africa need for food and delivery
requirement tripled in food emergencies, thus, it was a compelling context that
led to the emergence of NEPAD and CAADP, lamenting however, that by 2000, there
was no African country in the high group of Human Development Index (HDI)
measure.
“No African countries in the high HDI group, small
number in the medium HDI group; and majority in the low HDI group,” he said,
that is 32
out of 35 countries in Africa.
In
order to sustain CAADP momentum, he said, less focus
must be on the issue of public financing and hence development aid, decrying
weak inter-ministerial and inter-sectorial coordination and multiplicity of
initiatives.
Africa, Bwalya said, still have food insecure and
high levels of hunger and malnutrition, stressing that low agric productivity
has resulted in low rural incomes.
Remmy
Nweke