Annan calls for Green Revolution

ADDIS ABABA – UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, yesterday called for a “Green Revolution” to feed Africa’s hungry, saying the world’s poorest continent must kick-start food output if it is to achieve long-term peace.

Annan told a food conference, ahead of this week’s African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital, Africa was unlikely to reach its target of halving hunger by 2015, leaving millions doomed to chronic poverty and vulnerable to everything from natural disasters to the global AIDS epidemic. “Let us generate a uniquely African Green Revolution – a revolution that is long overdue, a revolution that will help the continent on its quest for dignity and peace,” Annan told the conference, attended by African leaders as well as scientists, food experts and representatives from rich donour countries.Africa has largely missed the benefits of earlier Green Revolutions, which harnessed technological advances to triple food output in Asia and Latin America, dramatically lowering the number of undernourished people.Nearly 200 million people, or one-third of adults in sub-Saharan Africa, remain severely undernourished, and food output is declining in 31 out of 53 African countries despite a population expected to double to 1,5 billion by 2030.Africa’s AIDS crisis, which infects roughly 27 million people across the continent, is also playing havoc with food output, killing millions of agricultural workers and forcing even more off the fields to care for the sick.Monday’s food summit was called to study ways of creating an agricultural breakthrough in Africa – a goal Annan said was achievable despite environmental degradation, extreme reliance on rainfall rather than irrigation, high transport costs and undercapitalised farmers facing tough global tariff barriers.Participants in the conference said the problems could be overcome, but only if Africa gets help from the developed world which has thus far not followed through on promises for hundreds of billions of dollars in development assistance.”This is not wishful thinking, this is not money down the drain, this is money to save lives and the time is now,” said Jeffrey Sachs, Annan’s special adviser and director the UN’s Millennium Project which set specific development goals for Africa.- Nampa-Reuters”Let us generate a uniquely African Green Revolution – a revolution that is long overdue, a revolution that will help the continent on its quest for dignity and peace,” Annan told the conference, attended by African leaders as well as scientists, food experts and representatives from rich donour countries.Africa has largely missed the benefits of earlier Green Revolutions, which harnessed technological advances to triple food output in Asia and Latin America, dramatically lowering the number of undernourished people.Nearly 200 million people, or one-third of adults in sub-Saharan Africa, remain severely undernourished, and food output is declining in 31 out of 53 African countries despite a population expected to double to 1,5 billion by 2030.Africa’s AIDS crisis, which infects roughly 27 million people across the continent, is also playing havoc with food output, killing millions of agricultural workers and forcing even more off the fields to care for the sick.Monday’s food summit was called to study ways of creating an agricultural breakthrough in Africa – a goal Annan said was achievable despite environmental degradation, extreme reliance on rainfall rather than irrigation, high transport costs and undercapitalised farmers facing tough global tariff barriers.Participants in the conference said the problems could be overcome, but only if Africa gets help from the developed world which has thus far not followed through on promises for hundreds of billions of dollars in development assistance.”This is not wishful thinking, this is not money down the drain, this is money to save lives and the time is now,” said Jeffrey Sachs, Annan’s special adviser and director the UN’s Millennium Project which set specific development goals for Africa.- Nampa-Reuters