UNDP Recommends Transformative Change for Food Security

The United Nations Development Programme (PNDP) in its first-ever Africa Human Development Report, with theme, "Towards a food secure future," has indicated that building a food secure continent requires transformative change that is accompanied by a shift of resources, capacities and decisions to smallholder farmers, poor communities and women.

According to the 2012 report launched on Thursday July 19 at the Yaounde Hilton Hotel, when women and other vulnerable groups have a voice in decisions affecting their lives and livelihoods, their capacities to produce, trade and use food is materially enhanced.

Information garnered in the 175-page report shows that Sub-Saharan Africa is enormously blessed with resources. Paradoxically, it is increasingly lagging behind in sustainable food security. Human development, the report notes, requires nutrition policies that unleash the potentials of today and future generations. The seven-chapter report handles topics like, "From hunger to human development," "How food insecurity persists amid abundant resources," "Persistent challenges and emerging threats to food security," "Sustainable agricultural productivity for food, income and employment," "Nutrition policies for a food secure future," "Resilience and social protection for stability in food systems," and "Empowerment for social justice, gender equality and food for everyone."

Speaking at the ceremony, the Acting UNDP Resident Representative in Cameroon, Cornneille Agossou, said Cameroon, like other Sub-Saharan African countries, faces food shortage. "Cameroon needs to increase productivity in the agricultural sector by empowering and improving the knowledge of peasants, increase the resilience of the population to various economic and climatic shocks as well as other shocks related to growth. We need to empower women and children and also to make them take part in the debate on the future as well as making national authorities accountable for the policies that are applied in the country. The new way of dealing with this is to consider it as a human development issue. As such, it needs a comprehensive approach," he said.

Sitting in for the Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, the Secretary General in the ministry, Paul Tasong, said Cameroon is committed to ensuring that every citizen feeds to his fill. "Within the framework of the Growth and Employment Strategy Paper, food security is at the centre. We can by no means become an emerging country if we are a food insecure country. The fruit of that growth must trickle down to the Cameroonian in the village," Mr Tasong intimated.