São Paulo – This Wednesday (21st), the African Union Commission (AUC), the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Lula Institute announced that a high-level meeting will be held on March 4th and 5th to discuss proposals for fighting hunger in Africa. Upon announcing the meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said the Brazilian income transfer program Bolsa Família (Family Allowance) can be applied in the continent to ward off food insecurity. He also spoke for the improvement of family farming in the continent.
“In Brazil, over an eight-year old span, we were able to rescue 28 million people out of absolute poverty and have 40 million move up social classes. It was the greatest moment we have ever seen in the history of our country, in terms of income transfer. The income transfer policy worked out in Brazil because we had a very well done registry, and through the registry the people would receive the benefit via a magnetic card at the bank,” said Lula regarding the Bolsa Família program. It is by means of this program that the government passes money on to the mothers of poor households so that they can buy food. The amount is proportional to the number of children.
According to information released by the FAO, through the partnership, the three organizations will share their experiences in fighting hunger, and thus apply the best-suited techniques to the situations of each of the countries. Lula said small farmers must be granted access to credit and technology. Thus, they will be able to boost crop productivity, increase their incomes, and enjoy higher quality lives.
“Once and for all, we must put an end to the ‘culture of survival’ rhetoric, by which people are educated to learn to just produce that small amount of corn, of cassava and potato that they will eat themselves. That is all very important, but we want people to learn that with credit and technology, they will produce more, they will eat more, they will sell more, they will have the resources at home that will grant them access to material goods and allow them to take better care of their families,” said the former president.
At the meeting, Lula, the AUC president Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, and the FAO director José Graziano da Silva agreed that fighting hunger in Africa requires the sharing of experiences between countries, and improvements in coordination and allocation of financial and human resources to strengthen national and regional institutions.
Zuma said 60% of farmable lands in Africa are yet untapped, and that this “huge potential” can make the difference in fighting hunger. “It is time to move beyond subsistence farming and consider how we may join industrial agriculture,” he said. According to the FAO, the amount of malnourished people in the continent increased from 175 million as of 1990 to 239 million at this time.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
