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In Dakar, a summit co-organized by Senegal and the African Development Bank opens this Wednesday to “unleash the food production potential” of the continent. About twenty Heads of State and Government are expected, and about forty countries will be represented until January 27th.
From our correspondent in Dakar,
« It will not be a summit like the others promises Beth Dunford, Vice President of the African Development Bank for Agriculture, Human and Social Development. With the consequences of the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, there is “ emergency “, she says. ” We know that nearly 250 million Africans sleep hungry every night, and that is unacceptable. We also know that food prices are rising, making it harder for people to feed their families. The cost of fertilizers is also increasing, farmers are finding it difficult to produce more. So now is the time to mobilize to strengthen food sovereignty and food security “, she explains.
The potential is there, and the solutions exist, according to Beth Dunford: new varieties of seeds, for example, adapted to climate change. The AfDB promises concrete agreements, in the continuity of its strategy entitled “Feed Africa” launched in 2015. “ Since then, the AfDB and its partners have contributed $7 billion for this strategy, and reached 74 million farmers, with many successes that we hope to replicate at scale on the continent, with political commitment. “, she says.
Feed more, and feed better
Over the next three days, the participating countries will therefore present their plans, their “national pacts” to the partners in order to obtain funding. The challenge for the Senegalese Minister of Agriculture, Aly Ngouille Ndiaye: feed more, and feed better, “ without changing what we eat ».
« We know where we want to go given the changing demographics. We want to develop what we consume, because we still import rice, despite all the efforts we have made, despite the considerable increase in our production. We import a lot of corn, we import practically 100% of our wheat, deploreAly Ngouille Ndiaye. So today, it’s about putting in place strategies that will allow us in the next five years to be self-sufficient for certain productions, and for others, even if we don’t achieve self-sufficiency, that we can have good levels of production. »
Senegal is counting on financing to the tune of 1600 billion FCFA (about 2.4 billion euros), i.e. almost a third of the overall budget devoted to food sovereignty in the country.