The president of Senegal and the African Union, Macky Sall, stated that “Africa must learn to feed itself” at the opening session of the “The Dakar 2 Summit on Feeding Africa: Food Sovereignty and Resilience.” Sall told the audience, which included several African heads of state, “To realise our potential, we need to spend at least 10% of the national budget to the agricultural sector.”
At the conference on food sovereignty that is being co-organized by the AfDB, President Sall is hosting a large number of counterparts, including the presidents of Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Mauritania, and Zambia. The importance of food security for political stability and national security was emphasized by all of the leaders of state.
The African Development Bank AfDB co-organized the summit with the subject “Feed Africa: Food Sovereignty and Resilience,” which underlined that 283 million Africans suffer from hunger, making up a third of the world’s 850 million food insecure people. According to Dr. Akinwumi A. Adesina, President of the AfDB group, this has to be addressed:
“The Dakar II Summit will mobilise political commitment, development partner and private sector investment, establish much needed policies and strategically drive actions to deliver at scale. This landmark event will be a turning point towards food sovereignty and resilience for the entire continent”.
William Ruto, the president of Kenya, urged more action during his speech at the conference, claiming that the continent had been falling behind for far too long.
** “Let me mention that having this conversation with so many of our good continent’s leaders of state while talking about food is not a very interesting thing to do. 60 years after the independence, I believe we ought to be talking about things than food “.
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On Friday, January 27, the three-day Summit in Diamniadio, close to Dakar, the capital of Senegal, comes to an end.
