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The head of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has welcomed a breakthrough commitment by African leaders to end hunger on the continent by 2025, and has pledged the UN's support as they work to “transform vision into reality.”
This is the first time in history that African leaders have made such a strong pledge to eliminate hunger and it is also a show of confidence that, working together, we can win the fight against hunger in Africa in our lifetimes,” FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said after African Union (AU) member States officially adopted the target at the AU Summit under way in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The 2025 target was initially hashed out at a high-level meeting on food security in Africa organized by the AU, Brazil's Lula Institute - headed by former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva - and FAO in Addis Ababa in July 2013.
Governments, international organizations, civil society and the private sector agreed on the target as a means of promoting concrete actions that build upon the momentum of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).
According to FAO, 11 African countries have already met the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) hunger target to reduce by half the proportion of hungry people between 1990 and 2015: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Djibouti, Ghana, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Togo.
“This is clear evidence that African countries are moving in the right direction,” Graziano da Silva said.
The new 2025 AU target aligns the continent with the Zero Hunger Challenge launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2012.
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SOURCE: UN News Centre
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