29 June 2016•Update: 11 July 2016
By Addis Getachew
ADDIS ABABA
Experts from the African Union and the United Nations are meeting in Ethiopia to design a framework for governments in the Horn of Africa to end hunger by 2025.
The African Union and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization partnered to launch a project entitled “Ending Hunger in the Horn of Africa: Moving from Rhetoric to Action”.
The two-day workshop at AU headquarters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa is concluding Wednesday with the attendance of representatives from east African trading bloc the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the East African Community (EAC), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Bank, and other financial organizations.
The project sets out to provide for an estimated 30 million people who go hungry in the sub-region, whose total population stands at 250 million, said Laila Lakosang, advisor for food and nutrition security with the African Union’s Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program (CAADP).
“This is the beginning that sets out to ensure implementation on the ground of the decision passed by African heads of state and government at their summit in 2014 in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea,” Lakosang said.
According to Patrick M. Kormawa, the FAO’s sub-regional coordinator for eastern Africa and representative to the AU Commission and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), over the coming year the project sets out to muster billions of dollars from international financial organizations to realize the project.
“When you are hungry you don’t have dignity,” said Kormawa.
The program, according to its official literature, will provide a forum for governments, regional economic communities, development partners, and stakeholders to discuss, review and develop new strategies on hunger eradication for the sub-region.
Speaking at the occasion, Ernest Ruzindaza, senior advisor to the AU commissioner for rural economy and agriculture, said, “The Horn of Africa, with its notable food insecurity challenges, which the recent El Nino effects aggravated, is the right place to start.”
He called the project the first of its kind and indicated a plan to launch an Agriculture Mechanization Project for the region on June 30.
