President Kufuor addresses World Food Summit

Rome (Italy) --- President John Agyekum Kufuor on Monday, called on developed countries to provide aid that would empower developing countries to be self-sufficient in their development efforts. He appealed to developed countries to consider using part of the grants given to developing countries in the form of relevant agricultural implements and other inputs.

They could as well lay infrastructures such as irrigation canals and storage facilities to boost agricultural production to make them self-sufficient in food production, President Kufuor told this year's World Food Summit which opened in Rome, Italy on Monday.

The theme for the three-day summit is "World Food Summit - Five Years Later". Leaders from 185 countries and the European Community at the 1996 World Food Summit held in Rome, expressed their unified commitment to ending hunger in the world.

They set a goal to cut by half the number of hungry children, women and men by 2015. At the time, the number of hungry people in the world was believed to be 841 million.

World leaders are being invited back to this year's summit, being held five years later, not to reconsider the goal but to re-affirm their commitments and consider concrete and specific measures to ensure achievement of the goal.

They would be required to review the advances made since 1996, to identify appropriate measures for success in the future and to mobilise the political will and resources required to accelerate their co-ordinated effort.

President Kufuor said, when farmers in developing countries were assisted to modernise their farming methods and when their produce did not have to compete unfairly with produce from the developed countries who still protect their markets and whose farmers tend to be heavily subsidised, then there would be a sustainable solution to the problem of hunger.

He said it seemed the 1996 Action Plan had not seen much progress because it lacked the specifics of how the stakeholders were expected to work together and mobilise resources within a time frame. "We must therefore use this review summit to strengthen and empower the FAO to be able to specify and target programmes at these areas of concentration of hunger," he added.

President Kufuor said the organisation must be enabled to mobilise the resources and oversee the distribution to cut out inefficiency and corruption. "Bad governance, high population growth rates and conflicts, which contribute to hunger, cannot be left as the exclusive concerns of the afflicted areas."

President Kufuor said these remedial measures to fight hunger must be seen as short term, the medium to longterm solutions would be to help the poor countries improve upon their agricultural practices and increase their food production.

"There exist in the world, enough research on climate, soil, technical tools and seed varieties to transform agriculture throughout the world. "The results of the many research projects that have been conducted should be shared for the betterment of humanity," he added.

President Kufuor said Ghana has fertile lands, waterways and a willing workforce but farmers are the poorest segment of society, because like in many developing countries their farming methods had remained antiquated.

He called on the developed countries to lend their support to the New Economic Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) because African nations have resolved through the initiative to uphold good governance, rule of law and sound economic management of their nations.

"Hunger, wherever it exists, demeans all humanity. We have it within our will to eradicate hunger. Let us therefore make sure that this time, our resolutions are backed by specifics on time, resources and political will. I have no doubt we shall succeed," he added.