Alliance to end poverty in Africa

By Wendy Parkin
Nippon Foundation chairman Yohei Sasakawa has called for an alliance of stakeholders in Africa to address agricultural policy, infrastructure building and market development.

Speaking to African leaders at the Fourth Tokyo Conference on African Development, Mr Sasakawa said: ‘Even if farmers increase their harvest, there are no markets where they can sell their produce. Or where markets exist, farmers lack access to them. This is one of the key differences between Africa and Asia.’

In the last 10 years climate change has seen a 30 per cent decline in food supply. The weather is failing the 70 per cent of Africans who are farmers; there are no pipelines or irrigation and governments do not provide water for crops so if it doesn’t rain African farmers lose their entire crop.

And Mr Sasakawa said the soaring price of fertilizer has had serious consequences for Africa’s farmers. He has called for this issue to be discussed at the G8 summit in Japan later this year.

Head of United Nations Ban Ki-Moon kicked off an emergency meeting of world leaders in Rome with a call for urgent measures to address the global food crisis, proposing a ‘green revolution’ at $21 billion a year in the developing world.

Fertilizers nitrogen, potash and phosphate were crucial to the ‘green revolution’ that dramatically increased crop yields in India. Nitrogen requires energy and tracks energy prices; supplies of potash are tight with China the biggest importer prepared to pay $650 to $670 a tonne; and phosphate prices are up 50 per cent on a year ago.

Since 1986, the Nippon Foundation has funded $180 million to the Sasakawa-Global 2000(SG 2000) programme to help small-scale farmers in 14 African countries increase and diversify their food crops.