Feed aggregator

Le tribunal de Ryad (Arabie Saoudite) a prononcé hier, lundi 7 septembre, le verdict final dans l’affaire de l’assassinat du journaliste Jamal Khashoggi en 2018 à Istanbul (Turquie). Le tribunal saoudien a annulé, ce lundi, les peines capitales prononcées contre les cinq agents des services de sécurité accusés d’avoir exécuté l’opération visant à « liquider » le […]

L’article Assassinat de Jamal Khashoggi : L’Arabie Saoudite prononce le verdict final  est apparu en premier sur .

Longer term investments are needed to enable the over 500 million small holder farmers in developing countries to grow more food, thus increasing their incomes and resilience. Credit: Miriam Gahtigah/IPS

By Timothy A. Wise
BOSTON, Sep 8 2020 (IPS)

African organizations are demanding answers after a recent report found that Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) strategies have failed spectacularly to meet its goals of increasing productivity and incomes for millions of small-scale farming households by 2020 while reducing food insecurity on the continent.

The theme for the tenth annual African Green Revolution Forum, a virtual weeklong event hosted by Rwanda that opens September 8, is “Feed the Cities, Grow the Continent.”

Based on the findings of a recent report on the host, AGRA, a more appropriate theme would be “Failing Africa’s Farmers, Starving the Continent.” The report, “False Promises: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa,” found that the 14-year, billion-dollar AGRA initiative has failed spectacularly to meet its self-proclaimed objectives.

My background research, which contributed to the report, showed that yields have risen slowly, poverty remains endemic, and there has been an alarming 31% increase in the number of undernourished people in AGRA’s 13 focus countries.

After AGRA offered no substantive responses to the findings from the July 10 report, three African organizations are issuing a public letter to AGRA demanding it release internal documents on its impacts.

They demand that AGRA provide “evidence to refute the study’s findings that AGRA and the larger Green Revolution project are failing to meet its goals of doubling yields and incomes for 30 million small-scale farming households by 2020 while reducing food insecurity by half.”

As Zambian researcher Mutinta Nketani told the German outlet DW, when an organization like AGRA “fails to achieve the goals it had set itself, all alarm bells should go off — not only amid civil society, but also amid AGRA itself as well as its donors.”

Failed policies of the past

The annual Green Revolution Forum brings together (virtually this year) leaders from government, business, civil society, research institutions, and the donors who have funded the latest effort to promote commercial seeds, fertilizers, and the markets that deliver them to Africa’s millions of small-scale farmers. Since its launch in 2006, AGRA has received about $1 billion in funding to lead this productivity revolution in its target countries.

African governments, though, have provided the bulk of the Green Revolution funding. Many use significant portions of their agricultural development budgets to subsidize the purchase of these commercial inputs for farmers who otherwise would not buy them. Collectively, those subsidies have totaled as much as $1 billion per year.

The strategy promises that commercial seeds and fertilizers will dramatically increase yields, allowing small-scale farmers to sell surplus crops, increase their incomes, and improve their food security.

According to the False Promises report, none of that has happened as AGRA reaches its self-declared 2020 deadline:

• Instead of doubling yields (a 100% increase), yields have gone up only 18% over 12 years for staple crops. Even for maize, heavily promoted by AGRA and subsidized by governments, yields increased a disappointing 29%.
• All the subsidies to maize diverted land and investment from other crops, some more nutritious and climate-resilient than maize. Millet production fell 24% under AGRA with yields declining 21%.
• Not only did farmer incomes fail to rise, hunger increased dramatically in AGRA countries, rising 31% since 2006 according to United Nations estimates.
These policies, heavily funded now for 14 years, have failed.

Rwanda: “AGRA’s hungry poster child”

Not only does AGRA have a lot to answer for at this year’s forum, so does Rwanda, which now hosts these annual gatherings. According to former Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, who is now chair of AGRA’s board, Rwanda was selected to host the AGRF because “Rwanda has shown the best example in agriculture transformation.” Based on that reputation, Rwanda’s former Agriculture Minister Agnes Kalibata now leads AGRA.

According to the False Promises report, Rwanda is a very poor example for sustainable and inclusive agricultural development. Under the government’s strict mandates to increase maize production, crop diversity declined dramatically.

Kalibata may point to a 300% increase in maize production and a 66% increase in yields, but traditional and nutritious crops like sorghum and sweet potato withered from neglect.

Overall yields for a basket of staple crops increased just 24%. And according to the latest U.N. figures, the number of undernourished Rwandans increased an alarming 41% since 2006 in spite of the boom in maize production.

The report calls Rwanda “AGRA’s hungry poster child.”

A former U.N. official recently decried Rwanda’s approach under Kalibata as “replacing hunger with malnutrition.” He and others have questioned her appointment by the U.N. Director General to lead next year’s scheduled Global Food Systems Summit.

Demand for accountability

In the public letter, PELUM-Zambia, BIBA-Kenya, and HOMEF of Nigeria ask Andrew Cox, AGRA’s Chief of Staff and Strategy, to provide evidence from AGRA’s own monitoring and evaluation to address the serious concerns raised in the False Promises report.

They note that AGRA refused researchers’ requests for such data to inform the report. They pose a provocative series of concrete questions about AGRA’s impacts.

“African farmers deserve a substantive response from AGRA to the findings in the report. So do AGRA’s public sector donors, who would seem to be getting a very poor return on their investments. African governments also need to provide a clear accounting for the impacts of their own budget outlays that support Green Revolution programs.”

They conclude with a plea that could be addressed to all the esteemed stakeholders at this year’s Green Revolution Forum: “We hope this request can refocus this important discussion on AGRA’s 14-year record in increasing productivity, incomes, and food security for smallholder farmers in Africa.”

That would be a better theme for the forum to take up.

Timothy A. Wiseis a senior advisor at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and the author of Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Future of Food (New Press 2019). He provided a background paper that contributed to the report, “False Promises: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.”

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');

The post Failing Africa’s Farmers, Starving the Continent appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Der Filmpreis des Europäischen Parlaments hat einige Veränderungen erfahren, um noch mehr europäische Filme einem noch größeren Publikum näherzubringen.

Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2020 - EP

Das Hotel von Schweiz-Auswanderer Urs Schmid in Costa Rica steht seit März leer. Die meisten seiner Angestellten musste er suspendieren.

Átalakul az Európai Parlament filmes díja, hogy még több emberhez eljussanak az európai mozit gazdagító alkotások.

Forrás : © Európai Unió, 2020 - EP

Lawmakers on the European Parliament's regional development committee are keen to see a quicker deployment of funds for the mitigation of the immediate effects of the COVID-19 crisis but they face an uphill battle with the member states who propose less money and potentially longer procedures.

Communication and Media Relations Section

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the OSCE’s Transnational Threats Department, in co-operation with the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Uzbekistan, organized an online train-the-trainer course aimed at strengthening Uzbekistan’s capacity to investigate terrorist financing. The event was held on 7 and 8 September 2020.

Participants were senior experts and practitioners from Uzbekistan’s Department for Combating Economic Crimes at the General Prosecutor's Office, the Academy of the General Prosecutor's Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the General Prosecutor's Office, and the State Security Service.

Forming part of a multi-annual training programme, the train-the-trainer course follows previous courses delivered by the OSCE and the UNODC in 2019, in Vienna and Tashkent that focused on applying the latest tools and strengthening analytical skills to effectively disrupt terrorist networks.  

The training programme on countering terrorist financing aims to increase Uzbekistan’s capacity to detect and combat terrorist financing and strengthen compliance with international standards in this area. In particular, UN Security Council Resolution 2462 (2019), the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF)’s standards, UN norms and OSCE commitments to promote human rights-based approaches in countering terrorist financing. Participants worked on real-life scenario-based exercises.

The course emphasized the key role of inter-agency and international co-operation and of multi-stakeholder approaches in countering terrorist financing.

Ein 40-Jähriger Deutscher bricht am Freitag zu einer Bergwanderung im Tiroler Karwendelgebirge auf. Unterwegs verläuft er sich und wird erst nach drei Tagen von der Bergrettung gefunden.

Die Finanzminister der EU-Staaten werden bei ihrem informellen Treffen in Berlin am Wochenende erörtern, wie schädigende Steuerpraktiken innerhalb der EU bekämpft werden können.

Über die Hälfte der Schweizer Firmen wollen wegen Corona auch künftig vermehrt Gewicht auf Homeoffice legen. Erste Unternehmen stellen auch schon wieder neue Angestellte an.

A Magyar Birkózó Szövetség (MBSZ) felfüggesztette hat szabadfogású versenyző, Veréb István, Mester Milán, Szurovszki Patrik, Lukács Botond, Juhász Balázs és Nagy Mihály válogatott tagságát.

Jeune Afrique - En Afrique de l’Ouest, la question du nombre de mandats présidentiels est le sujet du moment. Mais entre ceux qui estiment que...

A cseh legfelsőbb bíróság elutasította a jogerősen elítélt Jozef Majský üzletember panaszát, melyet a Prágai Városi Bíróság azon döntése ellen nyújtott be, amely alapján augusztus elején őrizetbe vették.

Die ostdeutschen, "neuen" Bundesländer sind wirtschaftlich schwächer aufgestellt als ihre westlichen Pendants. Es fehlt an Industriekernen. Doch diese Tatsache hat sich während der Corona-Pandemie als Vorteil herausgestellt.

Le chef de l’État Abdelmadjid Tebboune a reçu ce mardi Abdelaziz Belkhadem, indique un communiqué de la présidence « Abdelmadjid Tebboune a reçu ce mardi matin l’ancien chef du gouvernement Abdelaziz Belkhadem, qui a également occupé le poste de ministre des Affaires étrangères », lit-on dans le communiqué. Rédaction d’Algerie360

L’article Tebboune reçoit Abdelaziz Belkhadem est apparu en premier sur .

A TikTok videomegosztó közösségi hálózat is csatlakozik az Európai Unió önkéntes, online terjesztett magatartási kódexéhez, amely a gyűlöletbeszéd felszámolását célozza - közölte az Európai Bizottság kedden Brüsszelben.

After announcing €30 billion in support of an ecological transition last Thursday, the French government presented a controversial bill authorising an exemption from the ban on neonicotinoid insecticides, a class of pesticides suspected to be harmful to bees. German Green MEP Martin Häusling explains to EURACTIV FRANCE why he is challenging the decision.

Amazon-Chef Jeff Bezos ist dem US-Magazin «Forbes» zufolge das dritte Jahr in Folge der reichste Amerikaner. Bezos, der auch als reichster Mensch der Welt gilt, verfüge über ein Vermögen von 179 Milliarden Dollar, berichtete das Magazin am Dienstag.