African countries urged to mobilize sustained resources to finance agriculture

ADDIS ABABA, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- African governments should mobilize sustained resources to finance agriculture in their respective countries so as to meet the growing food demand of their populations, a senior AU official has said.

Addressing the press Friday on the sidelines of the ongoing 36th African Union (AU) summit, Josepha Sacko, AU Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy, and Sustainable Environment urged African leaders to fulfill the commitments made in the 2014 Malabo Declaration.

"We need to invest. We need to put 10 percent of the national budget. When we say 10 percent, we are talking about agriculture, livestock and fishery development and crops. It is all about rural development," she said.

Sacko said the AU is creating awareness that the majority of AU member states are not investing 10 percent of their national budget in agriculture and they are "off track". "They (African countries) are not investing. They are not domesticating their national development plan or the national investment plan to the African common policy."

Noting that one out of four people in Africa suffered from acute hunger as the COVID-19 pandemic hit the continent hard in 2021, the commissioner stressed the need for African countries to transform their agriculture and feed their people during hard times by investing at least ten percent of their national budgets.