Eradicating hunger in Africa by 2025 will require governments to build agricultural systems that are resilient to climate change, activists have said, arguing that this would ensure sustainable food production. The civil society organisations made the call on Tuesday during a regional dialogue on food and nutrition security in Kigali. They observed that climate change is an increasingly growing threat to food and nutrition security on the continent and more so to economies that are heavily reliant on agriculture. Prof Sidi Osho, Chairperson of the board of governors for the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN), said that most African countries are suffering from poverty and low productivity in agriculture, with serious human nutrition challenges. “We are having a problem of climate change across Africa…it has affected the smallholder farmers’ crops and livelihoods,” she said, expressing the need for irrigation technologies and increased budget allocation to agriculture. She said that availability and accessibility to nutritious food and research as well as innovation is critical to tackling stunting. “The UNICEF study says that one out of every five children is severely malnourished,” she said. African Heads of State through their Malabo Declaration of June 2014, recommitted achieving ending hunger by 2025 and reduce stunting among the continent’s children to 10 per cent. The declaration also affirmed their commitment to enhancing investment in Agriculture and uphold the 10 per cent public spending target to the sector. Focusing on inputs, irrigation and agriculture mechanisation, they argued, would at least double productivity. However, hunger remains a daunting challenge globally. Current evidence shows a rise in world hunger, FANRPAN says. Today, 821 million people are undernourished in the world, an increase of 36.4 million from 2015, FANRPAN adds. Of these hungry people, 257 million are in Africa. The current situation implies that if the trend is not reversed, Africa and the world at large, will fail to meet the Sustainable Development (SDG) Goal of ensuring access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food for all and eliminating all forms of malnutrition by 2030. While irrigation is a potential solution to this challenge, currently, only around 6 percent of the region’s cultivated land is irrigated. Venuste Muhamyankaka, Executive Director, of Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Alliance – an umbrella of civil society organisations in Rwanda aimed at promoting sensitive and specific nutrition actions – said that their 2015 study indicated that only 17 percent of children in Rwanda get appropriate breast milk supplement after six months of exclusive breastfeeding. He pointed out that a70 per cent of stunted children are attributed to the lack of such nutritional support. With about 38 per cent of children suffering from stunting in Rwanda, Muhamyankaka said that there was a need to increase efforts including funding to address the problem. “Increasing investment in tackling malnutrition should be effectively integrated in national development policies, and be given priority” he said adding that also scaling up nutritional education among parents is needed so that they provide their children with healthy diets. Jean Claude Musabyimana, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources said that 81.3 percent of the population is food secure, quoting statistics from the 2018 Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis. He reaffirmed that the country is resolved to attain food and nutrition security for all its citizens. “We are encouraging Rwandans engaged in agriculture to carry out professional farming with objective to increasing productivity through improved seeds, using fertilisers, and mechanisms to withstand climate change,” he said. editor@newtimesrwanda.com
