Africa can eradicate poverty through agriculture – PAFO
The President of the powerful Pan-African Farmers’ Organization, (PAFO) and the Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions, SACAU, Theo de Jager said the African continent can eradicate poverty through agriculture and cut imports, APA can report.SACAU is a regional farmers’ organization representing the common interest of farmers in southern Africa.
“The African continent can eradicate hunger and poverty through agriculture given the vast arable land we poses and cut all food imports, De Jager told the 11th Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), Partnership Platform meeting which kicked off on Wednesday in Johannesburg
The meeting, attended by 500 delegates, among them government political/policy and technical officials, parliamentarians, Regional Economic Communities, farmers’ organizations, private sector, civil society, development partners and donor communities.
De Jager said the continent is able to turnaround the current situation on which it consumes more than it produces and challenged the entire value chain to be more pragmatic in taking agriculture and rural development very seriously.
“I challenge you to feed the entire continent by 2025 and beyond because are capable of doing that with all the capacity, land and the natural resources we have�, he said.
The meeting is organized around the theme “Walking the Talk: Delivering on Malabo Commitments on Agriculture for Women Empowerment and Development�.
The theme reflects the tempo and ambition expressed by member states, both governments and non-state players in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea last year to see more action, results and impact on agriculture on the African continent.
The Malabo Declaration on agriculture and food security provides the African vision and resolve to accelerated agricultural transformation through collective and member states specific actions.
Among the key issues unique in the Malabo Declaration are two factors, namely the focus on delivering measureable results and impact around several areas of commitment and deepening the earlier (CAADP) Maputo commitments on which governments committed to allocating ten of their budgets to agriculture and achieve a 6 percent annual growth.
Against this background, the 11th CAADP Partnership Platform – the first CAADP Partnership Platform after the Malabo Declaration is designed to help shape how the resolve will be translated into action, results and impact.
The PP will help build a shared understanding of country and regional needs and expectations of them for rolling out the Implementation Strategy and Road Map including launching efforts to form technical partnerships to align with and support implementation.
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