Why the World Food Programme’s gong is a defining moment in history.



The sight of David Beasley, in a recent tweet, sitting on the floor of the World Food Programme (WFP) office in Niger surrounded by staff, celebrating a well-deserved Nobel peace prize win, brought back memories of Nasseiba Ali.



I was on assignment for the Associated Press to uncover an ongoing acute food crisis in Niger. My journey led me to a life-changing encounter with Ali, a 20-month-old girl who weighed just 12 pounds.&nbsp;&nbsp;



I waved, talked, sang to her, but it prompted no reaction from Ali. Little did I know that her eyes clouded at night, one of the symptoms of her chronic malnourishment.&nbsp;



A mission initially scheduled for one week stretched for an entire month and led me to Zinder, Maradi, Tawa, and Agadez. I met Ali and her grandmother at a feeding center set up in Maradi, 540 kilometers (335 miles) from Niamey, the capital of Niger.



Ali was lucky to make it to the center, barely alive after her grandma trekked several hours with her on her back.



Despite an exceptionally hard and emotionally charged assignment, I witnessed first-hand the outstanding work of hundreds of dedicated and selfless champions on the frontline of hunger.&nbsp;



The WFP&#8217;s 2020 Nobel Peace Prize win is only natural. Indeed, it is a testimony of the humanitarians&#8217; admirable mission to help end world hunger, often in emergency settings.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Today, 690 million people still go to bed on an empty stomach.



One in nine people worldwide still does not have enough to eat.



The WFP&#8217;s gong is a defining moment in history,&nbsp;yes, but more importantly, it has moved the critical issue of hunger on top of the global agenda. Thus, igniting and conveying a renewed sense of urgency.



It is a defining moment for the institution&nbsp;forging ahead to move the needle on ending world hunger, under the leadership of its Executive Director.



The 2020 Nobel Peace Prize has created a renewed impetus to rally around hunger, scale-up efforts to mobilize much-needed funds.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Despite raising $8 billion in 2019, $4.1 billion is still needed to bridge the funding gap.&nbsp;



At stake are the lives of millions on the brink of starvation.



The Norwegian Nobel Committee described the humanitarian organization as &#8220;a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.&#8221;



Without taking away anything from the WFP, I can say that&nbsp;the WFP&#8217;s gong is a defining moment in history&nbsp;for multilateralism, and our collective resolve to save lives, change lives and make a difference.



Other equally dedicated multilateral institutions, such as the African Development Bank, the World Bank, the Asian Development, to name just a few, deserve our attention.



Indeed, these institutions provide life-saving support to millions globally, often in extremely fragile settings.



At the Bank, we did our part to provide relief to our Regional Member Countries with a $10 billion Covid Respond Fund. The funds helped bring urgent relief and retool our economies in the wake of the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic.



When Covid-19 hit, WFP’s Beasley warned of potential famine of “biblical proportions&#8221;.



The Bank’s Feed Africa strategy aligns with the WFP’s objectives to end hunger.&nbsp; Approvals under the <a href="https://www.afdb.org/en/annual-report/financial-report/bank-group-operations-through-high-5-lens/feed-africa">Bank’s Feed Africa priority amounted to UA 884.7 million in 2019, making a difference in the lives of 20.3 million people, 9.6 million of them women.</a>



Through my lens as an African woman, a wife, the scenes of empty thatched-roof huts where villagers store grain, the scenes of acacia leaves boiled into a thick paste, eaten in the evening in hopes it will lull the children to sleep, are still vivid.



Fifteen years after my encounter with Ali, the world is still gripped by vast food insecurity. Yet, there is every reason to be hopeful. Not because the challenges are fewer, not because we have the resources at hand, but simply because there is a sense of renewed impetus around reversing hunger.



As Nelson Mandela said: “Remember to celebrate milestones as you prepare for the road ahead.” The 2020 Nobel Peace Prize is a key milestone. A moment to celebrate while we brace for future challenges and more wins!



– By Nafissatou N’diaye Diouf, the Ag. Director, Communication and External Relations at the African Development Group. A former Associated Press journalist for West and Central Africa, she has covered several crises including an acute food crisis in Niger in 2005.

YEMEN-CONFLICT-AID

On The Frontline Of Hunger

By Sabdiyo Dido Bashuna, Senior Technical Adviser Value Chains &amp; Agribusiness, Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA)



As Covid-19 continues its spread across Africa, the restrictions to limit infection are having a disproportionate impact on half of the continent’s food growers and producers: women.



At a time when food security is under extra strain because of the pandemic, women in agriculture are enduring extra hygiene and social distancing measures on top of endemic inequalities, which together undermine their capacity to respond and recover from the crisis.



But the pandemic has also triggered creativity and survival techniques, leading to product diversity, new digital marketing and distribution channels.



Across Africa, women make up&nbsp;<a href="http://www.fao.org/3/am307e/am307e00.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">50 per cent</a>&nbsp;of the agricultural labour force as well as often taking primary responsibility for caring for families, households and communities.



Yet historic inequalities mean women are facing the added pressure of the coronavirus outbreak while also having access to just a fraction of the necessary resources, from land and labour to finance and trainings.



In normal times, the productivity gap between men and women farmers is an estimated&nbsp;<a href="http://www.fao.org/3/i2050e/i2050e04.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">30 per cent</a>&nbsp;as a result of unequal access to resources, but with shocks like coronavirus exacerbating existing inequalities, the potential impact on food production, food security and nutrition could be far greater. &nbsp;&nbsp;



Better supporting African women in agriculture would help bridge this gap and increase both yields and profitability, providing more food for the poor, sick and hungry, and more income to support rural families during the global health emergency. So how can we do this during the pandemic?



One challenge of persistent gender inequality is that women, whose roles are often home-based and even more so during the coronavirus outbreak, tend not to present themselves for support.



The first barrier to overcome, then, is reaching women in the first place, whether with agricultural advice, financial support or valuable farm inputs like seeds, fertilizer and pesticides.



For more than three decades, CTA has worked closely with extension workers in Africa, who make direct contact with women through cooperatives and communities while also championing digital tools and services that are less intrusive or demanding.



Online networks such as&nbsp;<a href="https://value4her.hivebrite.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">VALUE4HERConnect</a>&nbsp;have provided a platform for African women entrepreneurs in agriculture that offers networking, mentoring and training support in a way that is convenient for heads of households.



These kinds of networks are also helpful for addressing a second challenge resulting from gender inequality, which is that the majority of women’s agri-businesses tend to be smaller and more likely to fail given the low levels of resilience.



To be effective, any tailored support for women must also be channelled with such small businesses in mind. Only a small fraction of rural women own bank account, for example, so accessing such funds is a challenge.



Providing grants and flexible loans for women can help them afford financial services like insurance and credit that protect their livelihoods against stresses while allowing them to invest in growing their enterprises.



Additionally, for women to fulfil their often care-based roles in households and on farms throughout the pandemic, they must be safe, both from the risk of infection and gender-based violence, which has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2020/issue-brief-covid-19-and-ending-violence-against-women-and-girls-en.pdf?la=en&amp;vs=5006" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">increased</a>&nbsp;as a result of lockdowns.



Finally, the new coping mechanisms and survival techniques adopted by women in agribusiness during the pandemic need to be documented, supported and scaled to cushion them from failure and help build resilience against future shocks.



Governments, health agencies and non-profits must provide technical assistance to help educate women on navigating the complexities caused by this pandemic, from basic hygiene measures to skills such as business management, renegotiation of supply contracts, or accessing business support.



Women smallholders already play such a vital role in producing and providing food in low-income countries, which has become all the more important in the wake of coronavirus.



But without targeted and appropriate support, they miss fulfilling their potential, which is a loss to women and families that depend on their incomes, and in the grip of a pandemic, it may also be a fatal oversight.

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Op-Ed: Why African Women In Agriculture Face The Greatest Double Burden Of Covid-19 And Food Insecurity

Last year, Bill Gates named his 10 breakthrough technologies for the year. Among the technological developments he outlined were robot dexterity, new-wave nuclear power, customized cancer vaccines and the cow-free burger. It was the first time that the list, usually compiled by MIT Technology Review, was created by a guest editor. It is no wonder that Gates rightly predicted that home computers and the internet would infiltrate much of our lives. Yet, when I went through this list, it was not necessarily universal. Many of these breakthrough technologies made sense through Western lenses. We have to ask, which of these breakthrough technologies will have the most significant impact on the African continent?



Perhaps the most pressing issue for Africa now is agriculture. Climate change has had a devastating impact on the agriculture sector, which is particularly concerning when you consider that most African economies still heavily depend on it. A study by McKinsey &amp; Company found that more than 60% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa is smallholder farmers, and about 23% of sub-Saharan Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) comes from agriculture. Yet, increases in temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns and extreme weather events not only disrupt entire industries but reduce food availability and impacts food quality. This, of course, is coupled with the fastest-rising population, which places more strain on resources.



We have already observed in the last few years how devastating a drought can be. South Africa has become a significant food importer, while Kenya and Zimbabwe are on the verge of starvation. This has seen the regional and national economic growth take a severe knock. Yet, as the United Nations put it, “the continent has enormous potential, not only to feed itself and eliminate hunger and food insecurity but also be a major player in global food markets.” So how do we go about this? I would argue that tapping into the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) does not just serve as a way of revitalizing the agricultural sector but also realizing its potential. As the American financier Bernard Baruch once put it: “Agriculture is the greatest and fundamentally the most important of our industries. The cities are but the branches of the tree of national life, the roots of which go deep into the land. We all flourish or decline with the farmer.”



I have just bought a farm and have been looking at ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) can make farming more efficient. Farmers can tap into AI to combat disease and pests, which have been made worse by climate change and pesticide use. Drones and other robots equipped with computer vision can collect data points from the farms’ existing crops. If you were to ask me to spell out some breakthrough technologies, many of them would be inextricably linked with the agricultural sector.



For instance, it is estimated that humans would need to plant over 1.2 trillion trees to combat climate change. Here, we could use AI to automate this process.



Airlitix is a South African AI software that is currently being used in drones to automate greenhouse management processes. We could take this a step further. Airlitix can collect temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide data as well as analyse soil and crop health. 



Elsewhere, similar technology has been adopted. The Third Eye project in Kenya uses near-infrared cameras mounted on drones to survey and diagnose the plants for pests and diseases, water stress and nutrient deficiencies. This requires a combination of historical data and the use of AI. Last year, IBM developed an AI-powered app to test the quality of their soil and water on location, in real-time. The AgroPad is a technology that can rapidly perform chemical analysis of water and soil samples. In California, Ceres Imaging has mapped fields using images of farms, which are analysed using AI to ascertain whether crops are getting enough water. This technology helps farmers decide when to plant, water, spray and harvest their crops.



This conversation crops up as we scrutinize what it means to have a green economy. The 4IR does not merely provide tools for efficiency, but it presents a unique opportunity to interrogate how we can transform the industry as our natural environment deteriorates.



To a large extent, we underestimate the importance of the agricultural sector. Yet, without it, we would not have food security, we would see our economies crumble and there would be untold job losses.



-Tshilidzi Marwala

Tag: World Hunger

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

On The Frontline Of Hunger

Op-Ed: Why African Women In Agriculture Face The Greatest Double Burden Of Covid-19 And Food Insecurity

Op-Ed: How To Be A Major Player In Global Food Markets