Roger Thurow - Outrage & Inspire

FROM WORDS TO ACTION: A RWANDAN BEGINNING

From Left to Right: Gayle Smith, Senior Director for Relief, Stabilization and Development at the National Security Council and Senior Advisor to the President of the United States; Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda; Dr. Agnes Kalibata, Rwanda's Minister of Agriculture; and H.E. Commissioner Rhoda Peace Tumusiime, the African Union Commissioner for the Department Rural Economy and Agriculture (DREA). Photo taken at the opening session of the Rwanda Post-Compact CAADP Meeting held in Kigali, Rwanda (December 7-8, 2009). 

They were listening in the hills of Rwanda a year ago when a new American president, this one with African lineage, took the oath of office.  Minutes into his inaugural address, Barack Obama stirred their hopes:

“To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow, to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.”

They were listening several months later, when the governments of the leading industrial countries – the G8 – pledged more than $20 billion in agriculture development aid.  And they were listening in September when the U.S. convened a special United Nations session to build support for a coordinated strategy that would reverse the decades of neglect of agriculture development in the poorest countries, particularly in Africa.

They heard all the words and wondered if there would ever be any action behind them.

“We were asking ourselves, ‘Is this hype ever going to turn into anything serious?,’ ” Rwanda’s minister of agriculture, Agnes Kalibata, told me.  “Why don’t we start moving?”

Impatience, and malnutrition, were growing in her country.  So Kalibata and her government issued a challenge to the U.S.: Come to Rwanda and get to work.  Help make our farms flourish.

And so, in December 2009, the U.S. and other western governments and leading development institutions came to Rwanda and finally put their words into action.  While their food aid once again poured into other east and central African nations to rescue millions from starvation, the donors gathered in Kigali and ignited a Global Food Security Initiative that aims to help farmers grow more of their own food rather than merely feeding them.  If it is successful and spreads to other countries on this most malnourished of continents, it could change the way hunger is fought and development aid dollars are spent, and usher in an agriculture revolution in Africa.

“Our commitment to go beyond emergency intervention to long-term investment … is a model for how we are thinking about development,” says Cheryl Mills, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has been rallying international support for the shift.

Elemental as it may sound, boosting agriculture production in the developing world hasn’t been a priority for a long time.  It is one of the gobsmacking outrages of international politics that for the past two decades rich world aid for agriculture development in the poorest countries, particularly Africa, has dramatically declined, falling by more than half from its peak in the early-1980s.  Rather than fight hunger with long-term agriculture development, the world relied on providing emergency food relief from surplus production in the West.

The food crisis of 2008 exposed the danger of that strategy.  Soaring commodity prices and plunging surpluses triggered riots over scarce and expensive staple foods like rice and corn in dozens of developing countries.  In Haiti, which had been directed by international development strategists to rely on imports of cheap food from places like the U.S. rather than feed itself, street protests toppled the government when that cheap food suddenly became very expensive.  A large part of Haiti’s impoverishment now on heartbreaking display after the earthquake had been fostered by this strategy that intentionally left Haiti dependent on others for staple foods.

Rwanda had also been suffering from the neglect of agriculture.  Typical of sub-Saharan Africa, about three-quarters of Rwanda’s population depends on farming for its own food and a bit of income.  Agriculture provides one-third of the national income.  Yet Rwanda’s rural infrastructure is underdeveloped.  A lack of irrigation leaves it almost wholly dependent on rain.  The hills are scarred with erosion.  Markets are weak, transport is difficult, seed research is scarce.  Since the genocide of 1994 ravaged the countryside, hunger reigned.

“Two-thirds of the country wasn’t producing adequate food.  Food aid was more rampant than anything else,” Minister Kalibata said by phone a few days after the meeting.  “The need to invest in agriculture is huge.”

In 2007, the Rwandan government, anxious to cut its dependence on food aid, embarked on its own push to boost farm production.  Since then, it has more than doubled its spending on agriculture, to 6.6% of its 2009 budget with a goal of 10% by 2012, according to the agriculture ministry.  Rwanda was the first country on the continent to complete an investment strategy under the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) of the African Union.

So when President Obama and other leaders began formulating a new strategy to combat hunger – framing it as necessary for international “security” – Rwanda was ready.  When representatives of the U.S. and others arrived in Kigali in early December, Rwanda presented an investment plan heavy on details and already subject to continent-wide scrutiny.  The total agriculture investment needs for the next three years were pegged at about $890 million, with priorities such as irrigation, soil conservation, local seed research and extension services to advise farmers.  The government said it was putting up $540 million, leaving a funding gap of about $350 million.

The donors pledged about $100 million at the meeting and promised to help raise the rest by this summer.  The U.S. said it would take the lead in bringing in other investors, from foundations, humanitarian organizations and corporations.  Multinationals are already involved in Rwandan coffee and tea production, the creation of dairy cooperatives, improving rail transport and starting an industry from plants that produce pyrethrum.

The Rwanda initiative represents a shift in style as well as policy: the local government, rather than the donors, is the architect of its agriculture plan.  It is key to President Obama’s approach to development aid: country-led initiatives where donors like the U.S. are partners rather than patrons.

“In the past, we have sometimes dictated solutions from afar, often missing our mark on the ground,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a speech earlier this month where she set the course of development in the 21st Century.  “Our new approach is to work in partnership with people in the developing countries by investing in evidence-based strategies with clear goals that the countries have taken the lead in designing and implementing.  This kind of rights-respecting development, built on consultation rather than decree, is more likely to engender the local leadership necessary to turn good ideas into lasting results.”

Rwanda is one of the first testing grounds.

“It’s a reversal of the old style of doing business, where the outside world would come in and say this is what we want you to do,” says David Nabarro, coordinator of the UN’s Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis, who attended the Rwanda agriculture meeting.  “Now the countries are saying to the outside world, ‘This is what we want to do and this is how you can help us.’”

The challenges to boosting African food production are immense.  Most countries, including Rwanda, are generally further behind in infrastructure and technical expertise than were the Asian countries at the beginning of the Green Revolution.  And, in the donor countries, agriculture development spending will compete with other funding priorities in tight economic times.  The Obama administration’s request for $3.5 billion over three years has been slowed in a Congress preoccupied with health care.

“We have to stay committed and keep others committed.  Americans are often used to seeing things change the next day.  That won’t be the case in agriculture development,” Cheryl Mills cautions.  “People like success, but no one likes waiting for it. We need to have a long vision.”

So raise the clamor to keep the global food security initiative at the top of the agenda.  If Congress could find $3 billion to fund its “cash-for-clunkers” program last year, surely it can find an equal amount to open an assault on hunger and ignite an African-led agricultural transformation.

For in Africa, the impatience, and the hopes, are building.  Within days of the Rwanda meeting, several countries, included Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Uganda and Zambia, told the African Union they wanted to push ahead with their own agriculture plans.

From the agriculture ministry, Agnes Kalibata says Rwanda, after a long period of darkness, is eager to show the way.  “We began this process feeling like a guinea pig,” she said, “but now we feel like a lighthouse.”

Comments

[Steven L Shaw]

Great Blog I like your style...I really like your thoughts about world hunger and the growing problems of poor nations...the worldwide problem of food shortages may continue and there need to be an increased awareness now -- your article helps!

Thanks for the great information!

Steven :)

[Free Shed Plans]

Third world countries really needs help from G8 countries, it's good to know the good things they're making and will continue doing for the coming years. Nice post :)

[girl@ Silk Wedding Bouquets]

Poor nations have a lot to be thankful to these countries opening their helping hands and inspire their government to do it's best to help their citizens.

[starcraft]

I like this topic on world hunger and the growing problems of poor nations. The worldwide problem of food shortages may continue and there need to be an increased awareness now.

[turks and caicos villas]

“To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow, to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.”
hmm poor people is still waiting...I wonder for how long. USA have its own problem right now