Experts discuss hunger and poverty alleviation

Accra (Greater Accra), 14th April ?99 ?

An international meeting of Food and Agriculture experts, working out effective strategies to reduce hunger and poverty in Africa, opened in Accra on Wednesday with a call on governments and the private sector to commit more resources to research and development.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who is the Chairman of the International Advisory Committee of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), made the call in a speech read for him by his Minister of Agriculture, Dr Kibirige Sebunya.

Others who addressed the meeting included Vice President John Atta Mills who is also a member of the Advisory Board. IFPRI is made up of 58 countries and institutions worldwide that spend a substantial part of their resources on agencies collaborating with Africa.

The Advisory Board was launched in 1993 charged with a Vision 2020 initiative to develop and promote a shared vision and consensus for action for meeting food needs while reducing poverty and protecting the environment.

President Museveni said although the population of sub- saharan Africa continues to increase at alarming rates, science and technology are not taking place where they are critically needed to solve the basic problems of hunger and poverty. "In our world knowledge is patented; intellectual property is a sacred cow," he said, adding that vital research output critical to the alleviation of hunger and poverty is being done in the private domain with profit as the greatest motivating factor.

President Museveni said catching up with the developed world is a ridiculous dream that developing countries should stop losing their sleep over. "We are in a man-eat-man world in which the smart and the strong win. We shall therefore have to depend on our own human and material resources, not to catch up, but to develop in a sustainable manner."

He listed challenges faced by developing countries, particularly unfavourable prices offered their commodities, and said unless they embrace self-reliance in the evolving globalisation their economies will not improve. "Escalating tariffs and ingenious non-tariff walls are erected against what we try to sell even in the most vital economic sector where we are supposed to have a comparative advantage in the production of certain raw materials and foods."

President Museveni said the password into the next century should therefore be self-reliance with an emphasis on training of confident and self-reliant personnel whose objective is to establish paths instead of following paved roads they did not construct. "We use fuel because we either do not have access to other sources of energy or because the other sources are too expensive for the majority of the population. We are destroying our own forests because we are poor."

IFPRI aims at generating information and encouraging debate to influence action by national governments, non-governmental organisations, the private sector, international development institutions and other elements of civil society.

In brief remarks, Prof. Mills equated the objectives of 2020 Vision to Ghana's Vision 2020 which sets out guidelines and strategies towards becoming a middle income country and said they have a lot in common.