Janneh says CAADP holds key to Africa's food security

Abstract

Stressing that development partners had not delivered on their commitment to significantly increase support to agriculture in Africa, UN Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Abdoulie Janneh, said in Rio on Thursday that fewer than 10 African countries had, themselves allocated 10 percent of their budget to agriculture as agreed at the African Union Summit in Maputo almost ten years ago. Mr. Janneh was speaking during a side event on "Green growth and sustainable development: regional perspectives" organized by the five UN Regional Commissions at the margins of Rio+20. Janneh said that due to years of neglect, African agriculture is still marked by smallholder subsistence farms, low technology agricultural production systems and poor infrastructure while private investment in the sector had been impeded by a lack of enabling policy and institutional environments.