Africa starting to take agriculture seriously: Annan
by Issouf Sanogo
ACCRA-Nobel Peace laureate and former UN secretary general Kofi Annan on Thursday said calls on African governments to give priority to agricultural funding are starting to bear fruit.

"We have long called on African governments to break from the past practices of underfunding agriculture and curtailing the development of the private sector," Annan said at a forum in the Ghanaian capital.

"Now this ...is happening. African governments are making changes," he said, citing at least five countries where notable strides have been recorded.

Food production soared by 16 percent in 2008 in the small central African country of Rwanda, while Malawi in southern Africa has become a net exporter of maize in four year consecutive years.

The arid west African country of Mali now dedicates 14 percent of its national budget to agriculture, he said.

Tanzania and Ghana are also included in the statistics.

Experts estimate that excluding the cost of adapting to the effects of climate change, Africa needs up to 39 billion dollars a year to attain the full economic potential of its farming sector.

Such funding, Annan said, can only come from African governments themselves, foreign donor aid and investors as well as from the private businesses in Africa.

Annan, who is also the chairman for the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa, an agriculture development organization, called on the private and public sectors to forge ties with farmers' and and civil society bodies to boost agriculture as a driver of economic growth and stability.

He also stressed the need to back small holder farmers in a bid to battle hunger and poverty.

Some 800 delegates among them senior government and corporate leaders, donors and farmers are at the three-day forum trying to chart a way for new investment and policy to boost agriculture in Africa.

Ghana's Vice President John Dramani Mahama also told the meeting Africa's future is tied to agricultural development.

"For Africa the time is now to transform its agricultural sector. Africa is endowed with all the natural resources yet we are lagging behind," said Mahama.