AU and FAO launch project to end hunger in Horn of Africa

The project, dubbed "Ending Hunger in the Horn of Africa: Moving from Rhetoric to Action", is in line with the FAO-AU partnership to address hunger and translate earlier commitments into action to tame food insecurity and malnutrition in the sub-region.

A two-day workshop that deliberated on the project, kicked off on Tuesday at the AU Headquarters in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa.

The workshop discussed and reviewed the project work plan and key activities to ensure smooth implementation in the target countries and across the Horn of Africa which includes Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and Uganda.

The project will be implemented with an initial budget of $US 350,000.

The project is set to help target countries document successes, develop country-driven strategies to end hunger, as well as helping put in place monitoring and coordination mechanisms to coordinate the various ministries and departments involved in the implementation of the project.

Although individual countries made substantial efforts to cope with the situation and received support from the international community, there are still signs that the problem is still far from over in the Horn of Africa and the recurring and severe droughts and other natural disasters have, over the years, caused widespread famine, ecological degradation and economic hardship.

A regional approach has strongly been argued to supplement national efforts in addressing the problem of hunger and food insecurity.

The AU heads of states in June 2014 endorsed a declaration in Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, on accelerated agricultural growth and transformation for shared prosperity and improved livelihoods, and one of the main tenets of the declaration was the "Commitment to Ending Hunger in Africa by 2025".

Speaking at the opening of the workshop, Patrick Kormawa, FAO co-ordinator for East Africa, said the menace of hunger was still huge in the Horn of Africa, despite successes in some countries.

The FAO has been in the business of ending hunger for more than 70 years, he said, and had partnered with the AU for over 50 years.

"Our partnership with the African Union this time related to the project we are launching today, and is to put in place specific programs that will lead to eradication of hunger in the Horn of Africa," he said.

Responding to a question about the beneficiary population, Kormawa said: "Our target is all the member states in the Horn of Africa, that they internalise the programme, once internalising it, it means it affects the poor, it means it affects the hungry, it means it affects young people, it means it affects children, that is our target."

Ernest Ruzindaza, Senior Advisor to the AU Commissioner of Rural Economy and Agriculture, noted that the project was the first one in a range of activities for translating the Malabo commitments into concrete actions.

"The Horn of Africa with its notable food insecurity challenges, which the recent El Nino effects aggravated, is the right place to start with," he said. - ANA