Can
Maputo declaration save Africa from classification as a hungry people, malnourished
region and scale up food security ambitions, asked REMMY NWEKE in this report.
Preamble:
The latest
United Nations global report says 815 million are hungry people and ranked
Africa second with 243m victims out of 1.216 billion population of the
continent as at December 2016 by the World Bank. And the next phase is for the
victims to delve into malnutrition.
NaijaAgroNet reports that this is in spite of Africa
being ranked the world's second-largest and second-most-populous continent,
spanning to about 30.3 million kilometres in landmass, including adjacent
islands, covering some 6 per cent of earth's total surface area and 20.4 per
cent of its total land area. Africa also ranks fifth among continents by Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) worth $2,190 billion, according to the online open
sourced encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
However, UN’s
latest hunger and food security key numbers made available to NaijaAgroNet, saw Asia continent with 520 million,
that is, over 100 per cent of African quota; whereas the top three continents
in the hungriest people in the world included Latin America and the Caribbean
with 42 million. Shared in percentage, NaijaAgroNet gathered showed that Asia
has 11.7 per cent; Africa has 20 per cent with eastern Africa alone scored 33.9
per cent, while Latin America and the Caribbean got 6.6 per cent.
This was the
first time that United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF) and World
Health Organisation (WHO), joined the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), International
Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and World Food Programme (WFP) in
preparing ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World’ report. This
change reflects the harmonization of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) agenda's
broader view on hunger and all forms of malnutrition.
Thus, NaijaAgroNet noted that the UN Decade of Action on
Nutrition, established by the General Assembly, is lending focus to this effort
by motivating governments to set goals and invest in measures to address the
multiple dimensions of malnutrition, facing the world today. So, the State of
Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017 was re-geared for the SDG era and
includes enhanced metrics for quantifying and assessing hunger, including two
indicators on food insecurity and six indicators on nutrition.
Economic sense of zero tolerance for
food loss, waste:
Speaking at the sideline
of the recently held 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly, the
Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Mr. José
Graziano da Silva, renewed calls with focus on tackling food loss and waste as
a pathway to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger, declaring
that "Zero tolerance for food loss and waste makes economic sense.” Noting recent report which indicated that
every $1 invested in food loss and food waste policies bring $14 in return, and
stressed that "Investing in measures to prevent food loss and food waste
also means making investments in pro-poor policies as it promotes sustainable
food systems for a zero hunger world."
According to him,
one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally
each year, pointing out that this loss and waste occur throughout the supply
chain, from farm to fork, insisting that beyond food, it represents a total waste
of labour, water, energy, land and other inputs, lamenting “If food loss and
waste were a country, it would rank as the third highest national emitter of
greenhouse gases.”
Graziano was joined by
Gilbert Houngbo, President of the International Fund for Agricultural
Development (IFAD), David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food
Programme (WFP), Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, Minister of Climate Change and
Environment of the United Arab Emirates, Josefa Correia Sacko, Commissioner for
Rural Economy and Agriculture of the African Union as well as representatives
of the governments of Germany, the Netherlands and Angola in calling for
greater cooperation by governments, business, development partners, farmers
groups and others to address the problem.
Food technologists
develop tools to prevent loss, waste
Of late, NaijaAgroNet reported that food technologists at FAO revealed they have
developed tools and methodologies for identifying losses, their causes and
potential solutions along the entire food value chain, from production, storage
and processing to distribution and consumption. Obviously reacting to the
latest UN disclosure that some 815 million hungry people are in the world, the
majority lives in rural areas of developing countries and are family farmers,
pastoralists or fishers, these experts cited South-East Asia, for example,
noting that fruit and vegetable producers found that around 20 per cent of
tomatoes were damaged during transportation because of the way they were packed
in bulk.
Confirming this, DG,
FAO, Mr. José Graziano da Silva, said the initiatives will improve packaging
practices, with participation of producers and other stakeholders, resulting in
an impressive 90 per cent reduction of these losses, recalling that in 2013,
FAO launched a global initiative on food loss and waste called Save
Food.
The platform, NaijaAgroNet gathered, includes a network of over 500 partners from
international organizations, the private sector, civil society and others with
the objective of promoting awareness and the exchange of ideas and best
practices on preventing food waste and loss.
FAO also said, it has
produced data and information so that decision-makers could better understand
where and how food losses and waste occur, and the agency is working with partners
to measure the impact of food loss and waste reductions on food security and
nutrition.
A nation undermining her children’s development:
Then long after, United Nations Children Fund
(UNICEF) exposed Nigerian government over alleged putting her children at risk
of under-development, both physically and mentally, because critical national
policies were not adequately provided to entrench foundation for their growth.
Maintaining that brain grows rapidly; thus providing good nutrition, loving
care and appropriately play and provide solid foundations for a child’s
learning could eventually contribution to economic and social growth.
In its Early Moments
Matter for Every Child, UNICEF outlined three
policies that could give parents the time and resources needed to support their
young children’s healthy development, including “two years of free pre-primary
education; six months of paid maternity leave; and four weeks of paid paternity
leave.” Decrying that Nigeria currently has just three months of paid maternity
leave, only one year of free pre-primary education and no paternity leave at
all, with only about one in every 10 pre-primary children are enrolled in early
education activities.
Also, NaijaAgroNet reports that according to a
medical journal, The Lancet, Nigeria ranks among the 10 countries with the
largest number of children at risk of poor development. Whereas the 2016
national survey indicated that 31 per cent of children under the age of
five were moderately or severely underweight in Nigeria. Insisting, “Stunting
as a result of malnutrition can cause irreversible physical and mental
retardation. Though, the exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of a
baby’s life has clearly been shown to improve physical and mental development,
the same survey revealed that only 24 per cent of Nigerian children are
exclusively breastfed for six months. Paid maternity leave will help to
increase the number of children exclusively breastfed.
As said by Mohamed Fall,
the UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, “What we call Early Childhood
Development, includes physical and cognitive support, and has a strategic place
in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Investing in Early
Childhood Development including services to support caregivers, quality
pre-primary education and good nutrition will help to secure healthy and
productive future generations in Nigeria.”
Yes, early childhood development matters:
In addition, he said that by supporting
exclusive breastfeeding, having Early Childhood Development policies in place
will help to improve the overall health and nutrition of a child, enable
parents and caregivers to be more responsive to children’s needs and provide
greater safety and security. It will also provide improved early learning.
He asserted that ‘With 90 per cent of a child’s
brain development occurring before the age of five, early childhood experiences
can have a profound impact on a child’s development and can ultimately impact a
country’s growth.”
The import of the foregoing is that if Nigeria
could undermine the growth of her younger generation and due to lack of
requisite policies as claimed by UNICEF, why should Africa not have a set of
hungry people, even to the tune of 243m. This is because lots of people and
Africans precisely look up to Nigeria as a ‘big brother’ who should show
leadership.
Maputo declaration,
nutrition and food security:
Of course, showing leadership is not all political,
but on the practical terms, may be by domesticating the African Union 2003
Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security (Assembly/AU/Decl. 7(II)),
which stressed that 10 per cent of national budget allocation should go to
agriculture development, invariably to the letter in the next five years, that
is till 2008.
In September 2016, the Alliance for a Green
Revolution in Africa (AGRA) declared that the countries which paid intense
attention to farmers and food production in the past ten years achieved the
most successful development in African history.
According to AGRA President, Agnes Kalibata,
“The countries that made the biggest investments in agriculture were rewarded
with sizeable jumps in both farm productivity and overall economic
performance,” and noted that agriculture had its biggest impact in countries
that embraced the African Union’s Comprehensive African Agriculture Development
Program (CAADP), which called for African governments to allocate 10 per cent
of national budgets to agriculture with a view to gain six percent annual
growth in the sector.
AGRA report also noted that even if they didn’t
hit the 10 per cent targets, early adopters of the CAADP have seen agricultural
productivity rise by 5.9 to 6.7 per cent per year, thereby, boosting a 4.3 per
cent average annual increase in overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and listed
CAADP adopters to include Nigeria, Benin, Burundi, Cape Verde, Ethiopia,
Gambia, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Rwanda, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and
Togo and attributed their posting of higher agriculture productivity and
stronger GDP growth with declines in malnutrition compared to countries that
have not adopted the initiative.
Submission:
Thus, the report urged African leaders and
governments for higher investment in agricultural research in the wake of
climate change and increased support for youths to take up farming.
Its unthinkable that a continent with the
landmass that Africa has should be graded among the hungriest people on earth.
Efforts should be made to reverse trend. If technology development could be
seen as slow and knowhow, do we need also tally behind on cultivating our
natural resources, agriculture inclusive.
Therefore, this is a clarion call on the
Nigerian government to show leadership, after all, an adage says ‘charity
begins at home’ and to whom much is given, much is expected, especially on the
UNICEF report, otherwise the continent’s future leaders may be stunted children
which will boomerang on respective member nations.
... Linking agrobiz, sustainable environs, people & technology
Pix: Moussa Faki, AUC chairperson and Audu Ogbe, Nigerian Minister of Agriculture
