Africa-Press – Angola. The executive director of the International Trade Center argues that African countries have arable land and sufficient capacity to feed themselves, so the African Union must decide “which country will produce what and how”.
” There is arable land, there is capacity. Therefore, there must be a decision among African countries on who will cultivate what and how and invest in this capacity to do so”, said Pamela Coke-Hamilton, in an interview with Lusa on the sidelines of the Afro-Caribbean Forum for Trade and Investment, which took place last week in Barbados.
The director of the International Trade Centre, a multilateral agency that operates under the umbrella of the United Nations, said that Africa has the capacity to feed itself and has not yet done so because there is a system that forces everything to be imported.
He recalled that 42% of African wheat imports come from a single country, Ukraine, so he called for a political decision and subsequent financing, through institutions such as the African Development Bank or the African Export and Import Bank (Afreximbank) .
“The leaders, the African Union, must make a decision, just as CARICOM [Caribbean Community] made the decision to reduce dependence on food imports by 25% by 2025. Africa must make a similar decision to ensure that no it happens again that a crisis can trigger food insecurity so suddenly,” said Coke-Hamilton.
The February invasion of Ukraine by Russia, two of the world’s largest grain exporters, has contributed to worsening food shortages in the world’s poorest regions, some of which are already experiencing severe hunger and malnutrition.
In the Horn of Africa, one of the most affected regions in the world, more than 37 million people face a situation of hunger, with approximately seven million children under the age of five suffering from acute malnutrition, as the World Health Organization warned in August. .
Despite efforts to resume deliveries of Ukrainian grain across the Black Sea, since the beginning of the year there has been a 46% drop in exports of these goods, according to the International Red Cross.
Organized by Afreximbank and the Government of Barbados under the slogan “One People. One Destiny. Unite and Reimagine our Future”, the AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum (ACTIF2022), held in Barbados from 1 to 3 September, aimed to strengthen economic ties between Africa and the Caribbean, a region that the African Union considers the sixth region of Africa.
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