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AGRA country director: We need integrated approach to improving food security 

The country manager of the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) says the world needs an inclusive approach to fixing food insecurity

Bashiru Musah, the country manager of the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is calling for an integrated approach to improving world food security as global leaders gather for the United Nations Food Systems Summit on Thursday (23 September).

“I expect the Food Systems Summit to come up with renewed commitments for us to be able to adopt a more holistic approach to food systems in Africa. I am looking at a food system that can help us tackle hunger and poverty so that we can improve our nutrition and the general wellbeing of our people,” he told Emmanuel Aboagye Wiafe on the Asaase Business News on Thursday (23 September 2021).

He said, “We expect our leaders to speak with one voice and call for change in the way food is produced and processed. So, we are proposing that one of the things the world should be looking at is investments in agribusiness for smallholder farmers.”

“Most of the foods we eat, 90% of it is produced by smallholder farmers. The SDGs are very important indicators for us set by the UN hunger and poverty in Africa can only end if we can build a resilient food system that is integrated with the world economy,” Musah said.

He added, “We need to tackle food systems from farm to table. We need to look beyond the production and look at how we are able to connect the different aspects of the value chain when it comes to food production and ensures we have public and private sector participation to provide the storage, infrastructure and technology in a very conducive policy environment that enables agriculture to triumph.”

The country director of AGRA said there was the need to have long-term planning and not just tackling food insecurity challenges piecemeal.

“Through past experience, we know that technologies (such as quality seed and fertilizers) help ensure better farm productivity and can help tackle some of these challenges. Especially in this era when climate change is negatively impacting agriculture. We believe such technologies are best delivered to farmers if packaged as a suite of services from local businesses, and after a lot of research, discussions, and collaborations. So, we all need to work together,” he said.

The UN’s Extraordinary Global Food Systems summit will launch bold and new actions to help deliver progress on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), each of which relies to some degree on the goal of achieving zero hunger.

The meeting was deemed necessary because the world currently is not on track to meet the zero-hunger target and other SDGs by 2030 unless drastic actions are taken.

Thursday’s summit will synthesise discussions that have taken place over the last 18 months during independent dialogues organised by governments, NGOs and private sector organisations.

President Akufo-Addo and other world leaders will be speaking at the summit.

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