Africa agri-food funding shortage
A number of countries and regions across the world are now on the edge of famine. Millions of people are going hungry due to conflicts, climate change and economic shocks. African continent is among the most vulnerable regions on the Earth, where situation is likely to worsen in coming time. A further delay in funding and any mismanagement can have dire and life-threatening impact on a huge population, say agriculture experts. Moreover, African agri-food sector is already facing investment crunch.
Massive agri-food sector underfunding has enhanced food insecurity, hindering the future development of nations across the African continent, says report. The Public Expenditure on Food and Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa report says, it’s time to offer funds and streamline public finance systems. By that way, we will be able to spend the scarce resources we have on the continent, says Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director-General QU Dongyu.
Unfulfilled commitments of investment in agri-food
The United Nations agriculture agency chief urged the world to “unblock the bottlenecks” that hamper potentials. He gave formula of increasing coordination and upskilling human capacity in the countries of the continent. The UN study is an analysis over one and half a decade, exposing the gap between age-old political commitments and financial realities in 13 sub-Saharan African nations. Earlier in 2003, African Union (AU) Member States vowed to boost socio-economic growth by pledging 10 percent of their national budgets to food and agriculture. However, their commitment was never fulfilled.
The FAO initiative is a survey of the Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) programme. The study that tracks public expenditure in Africa, reveals that only Malawi has consistently achieved that target. Mali has also met the target in some years. However, there was no success with Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda. According to the report, in some countries, food and agriculture budget hovers at just three percent of national budgets. Further, on an average little of that budget is put in food and agricultural development.
Africa agri-food funding crunch hampers growth
A fifth of the funding remains undisbursed due to insufficient implementing capacity. Agriculture is being implicitly penalized, says the report. As spending touches $80 per capita, the technical efficiency in agriculture has a dramatic rise, FAO’s Agri-food Economics Division Deputy Director Marco Sánchez. But as it starts to taper off subsequently, most of the African nations come nowhere near that amount, he added. Sánchez acknowledges a “narrow fiscal space” to expand public investment in Africa, especially during Covid-19 pandemic. There was a scope to generate efficiency gains through better spending, he argued.
As per the FAO report, most of the national expenditure on food and agriculture in Africa goes in fertilizer, tools and other inputs. Subsequently, this results in diminishing returns, explains Sánchez. Furthermore, there is a need to generate quality data to guide agricultural investment decisions, says FAO Chief Economist Máximo Torero. This report is a major step in this regard, he added. The report also suggests a need to monitor public investments more closely. The results of public investments can help in catalyzing private investments on the continent. If the inputs from the report are implemented properly, they can have impact on African agri-food sector.
