'Ending conflict is the key'

2004-04-02 14:06

Kampala - Ending conflict in Africa is the key to reducing hunger in the impoverished continent, former Mozambican first lady Graca Machel told an international summit here on Friday.

"Conflicts are the primary causes of food insecurity in our continent," Machel, a children rights advocate, told a conference seeking to draw up strategies to end hunger in Africa by 2020.

An estimated 200 million Africans are currently malnourished, and that number is expected to rise if action is not taken.

The three-day conference, which opened near Kampala on Thursday, is attended by Presidents Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, as well as more than 500 ministers, experts and farmers from 35 African countries.

"We cannot plan how to get out of food shortage and how to improve the nutrition status of our citizens without concentrating efforts in solving conflicts that affect our society," she added.

Machel said preventing and solving conflicts in Africa was a critical preventive measure to increase the ability to produce enough food on the continent.

"We need to re-prioritise our resources towards development. Resources that were concentrated on arms and the so-called security, has to be diverted now to human security, which is 'enough food for everybody'", she added.

European Union commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, Poul Nielson, also noted that although the undernourished population was decreasing elsewhere in the developing world, it has not changed in sub-Saharan Africa.

He pledged EU's continued support for Africa to attain food security, but cautioned that most of the work has to be done by Africans themselves.

"Development finally depends on developing countries' own actions," Nielson told the conference.

In keynote speeches to the opening session on Thursday, the three presidents urged the West to dump "protectionism" to help foster more food production in the African continent.

"We should not beat about the bush, we need a level-playing field in the global market because market access is the stimulus for people to produce sustainably," Museveni told the conference, whose theme is "Assuring Food and Nutrition Security in Africa by 2020."

- AFP