THE PROBLEM IS HUNGER AND POVERTY, THE ANSWER IS AGRICULTURE

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FOOD SECUREFUTURE SECURE

WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN:

WHAT SELF HELP AFRICA IS DOING

For 25 years Self Help Africa has been working to improve the lives of rural Africans, investing in sustainable programmes designed to increase food production and enable Africans to earn a living.

We believe that developing agricultural production at both local and regional levels is vital if the countries of Sub-Sahara are going to be able to feed their growing populations in the years ahead.

Practical and simple interventions can have a profound effect on agricultural production for small-scale farmers.

Providing farmers with a timely supply of good quality seed stock,supporting training programmes that increase farmer knowledge, promoting irrigated production through the use of treadle (foot) pumps and drip irrigation kits, and simple yet effective actions such as crop rotation, the use of manure based composting, complimentary cropping and the sustainable use of land and resources are amongst the many methods being employed by Self Help Africa to help rural communities to produce more food.

Allied to this we are supporting farmer groups to organise collectively into co-operatives, so that they can scale up their activities and thus reduce costs, can ensure a timely supply of inputs such as seed and fertilizer, can add value to their farm production and by working in unison can access new markets for the sale of their surplus produce and cash crops.

Pressure donors to allocate 10% of Overseas Aid to Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture – a symbolic pledge to match the Maputo Declaration, which committed African nations to commit 10% of their budget to agriculture.

Invest in extension services across Africa, given that it is crucial that advances in agricultural science andproductivity should be made available to all farmers.

Re-focus efforts on women farmers who, in many parts of Africa, form up to 70% of the total agricultural workforce, safeguarding them from unfair land tenure and inheritance, and giving them access to microcredit facilities.

INTRODUCTION

Investing in agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa will help some of the poorest people in the world to work their way out of poverty.

In each of the nine countries where Self Help Africa is working, agriculture is the backbone of the economy – providing employment for the majority, and a means of support for upwards of 70% of people.

Despite this, agriculture has been plagued by low productivity and under-investment, making it difficult for Africans to feed themselves and earn an income from farming.

Self Help Africa believes that by supporting farm families at grassroots, community and at regional levels we can help some of the poorest people to work, and to earn their way out of poverty. And as well as fueling economic growth, this investment will enable the countries of sub-Saharan Africa to feed their people, to fund improvements in social infrastructure such as health, education and water, and to weather the shocks caused by fluctuating global food prices and the threats posed by climate change.

With training and infrastructural improvements made possible by agricultural co-operatives, together with the application of sustainable technologies, farmers can benefit from increased crop yields and stronger connections to markets.

Support African governments to develop national strategies which integrate adaptation and disaster risk reduction (DRR) approaches for food security with a focus on smallholder-based agricultural systems

Encourage a revival of World Bank lending for agricultural infrastructure, including: lending for transport corridors, rural energy, clean water, irrigation, and farm-to-market roads; rebuilding key government departments like agriculture; agricultural R&D, extension and education; and unlocking credit systems for small farmers.

ORGANISING AGRICULTURE

Organising farmers into producer groups and co- operatives is playing a key role in Self Help Africa’s work to strengthen small-holder agricultural production amongst Africa’s rural poor.

Working at grassroots level with rural communities, Self Help Africa has encouraged and supported farmers to join together and work on land irrigation, production and distribution of better quality seed and the cultivation of market-orientated crops.

Measures which build agricultural capacity have given farmers access to lucrative new markets for produce, have enabled rural households to diversify and scale up their production, and have allowed tens of thousands of rural producers to create profitable farming enterprises on small-scale holdings which had formerly been used only for subsistence farming activities.

In Zambia’s Western Province, farmers are being organised into small commodity groups to produce market oriented produce including vegetable, fruit, livestock and beekeeping, and in Kenya it is a similar story, with new markets being sourced for small-holders to produce and sell sunflower oil, poultry, dairy goods and other farm produce for which there are ready markets.

In Ethiopia, the Agricultural Co-Operative Development Programme (ACDP) is doing likewise with the production and sale of wheat, fruit and pulses, with hundreds of dairy producers adding value to their milk products, and with a number of seed potato co-operatives developing a supply network which has become one of the country’s largest.

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ACDP has also identified markets for the sale of brewing malt to national breweries and of durum wheat to pasta manufacturers.

Similar initiatives are taking place across each of Self Help Africa’s programme countries,with the organisation of agriculture providing small-scale growers with new opportunities to expand, diversify and improve the profitability of their farming activities.

Self Help Africa’s MORE (Market Orientated Rural Enterprise) Project in Western Zambia has transformed the lives and welfare of thousands of small-holder farm families in the region.

Over 2,500 farm families in Western Province, the poorest and most disadvantaged region of the country, have been mobilized into commodity groups by this EU backed project – and are collectively producing a range of marketable farm products including cabbage, tomatoes, honey, poultry, small livestock and cereals.

Each group is being supported to access both local and regional markets for the food and goods they

are growing, and are now selling to hotels, resorts, schools, hospitals, market traders and factory producers- in many instances replacing goods that

had previously been sourced outside of the area.

Yet investment in the agricultural sector across much of Africa has endured years of chronic under-investment, while global development assistance for agriculture in poor countries has fallen from 18% in the 1980s to less than 4% in recent years.

At the same time unequal trading arrangements have allowed western producers to dump their surpluses on the markets of Africa and thus drive down local prices, while a new threat is rapidly emerging in the form of a changing climate - which has effected rainfall patterns, caused both drought and destructive flooding, and is threatening production for millions of families who have few alternates open to them.

The 2000 Millennium Goal to halve the proportion of the world population facing poverty and under nourishment by 2015 is in jeopardy – with increasing population, climate change and a global recession all putting additional strain on the resources that are available to assist the poorest and the most vulnerable.

It is heartening that the G8 countries and other world bodies are prepared to take the lead in adopting sound agricultural policies and strategies to support farming and rural developing in Sub-Saharan Africa.

We hope that others too will see the merit and value of this approach and back the sustainable and participatory approaches to poverty reduction that Self Help Africa has been championing for the past quarter century.

THE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

US President Barack Obama was just minutes into his inaugural Presidential address in January 2009 when he stated that: “To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow, to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.”

His promise affirmed a commitment that was made by World Leaders just months earlier, when the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon responded to the 2008 global food price crisis by pledging new focus and new resources to agriculture as a way of tackling food security for the world’s poor.

The food price crisis, which drove more than 100 million ‘new poor’ into extreme poverty because they could not afford the cost of such basic staples as maize, rice and wheat has generated new support for agriculture in Africa, with organisations such as Kofi Annan’s ‘Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa (AGRA)’, The Gates Foundation, and Bono’s ‘One’ movement amongst many who are championing investment in farming as a route out of poverty for hundreds of millions in the developing world.

Latest figures estimate that the number of people going hungry globally has risen above the one billion figure for the first time in human history.

5% of the people of Sub-Sahara, or approximately 600 million Africans rely on small scale farming for their survival. It is only by tackling the challenges and difficulties that they face that a lasting, long-term solution to the problems of extreme poverty will be achieved.

Self Help Africa - IrelandFreepost, Dublin Road, Portlaoise, Co. Laois, IRELANDTel +353 (0) 578 694034

Self Help Africa - UKFreepost RRXU-AZUB-EBEEWestgate House, Hills Lane, Shrewsbury SY1 1QU, UKTel + 44 (0) 1743 277170

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