By Bisola Adeyemo
Experts have called for cooperation between the European Union (EU) and Africa to build sustainable food systems on the continents to address the challenges of nutrition and food security, drive sustainable agriculture and increase food production.
This was said during the fourth European Union-Africa Business Summit, held in Marakech, Morocco, with the theme “Agriculture and Agribusiness: A stronger agriculture for a fairer rural development”.
Africa is said to hold most of the 600 million hectares of arable land left in the world, including 65 percent of the untapped arable. This, they said, makes Africa critical to the future of food production. With 60 percent of Africa’s population reliant on agriculture for income and livelihood, the continent’s future is also intricately bound to the success of agriculture, africanews said.
“This is the time for partners from all over the world to come and invest in the continent. They have the freedom to establish under the The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in any of their preference, and wherever they are established we are saying that their market is a whole continent.
“We have for instance CADEP, the CADEP framework, which is promoting agriculture in Africa. We have the Malabo declaration that was aiming at accelerating progress towards agricultural transformation, so these programs need to be implemented fully by our member states. We call on our member states to make sure that they are able to implement the policies that are in place,” Dr. Patrick Ndzana Olomo, the head, Investment and Mobilisation of Resources, AU Department of Economic Affairs said.
According to Phil Hogan, former European Union commissioner for agriculture, the EU-Africa business summit also agreed that the EU- Africa trade partnership in the sector must now focus on small holder farmers.
“We stand ready in the europoean union to work with our partners in the African Union and all of the countries to generate the necessary finance the technical knowledge and all of the partnerships and the alliances to make this happen. But the farmers must be at the center of the action.
“All of the various policy that have been announced here at the European Africa business summit are all academic if we don’t have people on the ground that are prepared to implement it and they have to be incentivized and they have to get proper pay for the work that they do for carbon farming and for energy renewables and for creating the jobs and this is where we must refocus our efforts and in the context of nutrition and food security, the farmer must be at the center of the activity,” Hogan said.
The EU is one of Africa’s largest trade and investment partners. Its Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) stock in Africa in 2020 was at €222 billion, compared to €42 billion from the US and €38 from China.
The summit was attended by Business leaders and policymakers from different parts of Africa.
