BY SAMUEL NABWIISO
Most African Countries may miss attaining the Sustainable Development Goals as it was envisioned by the World Leaders four years back.
The Sustainable Development Goals that most countries will fail to achieve is the goal of Ending Poverty and Zero Hunger by 2030.
“More than 820 million people in the world today do not have sufficient food to eat, of which 256 million are in Africa.
“The region also has the highest prevalence of undernourishment, at almost 20%. Another disturbing fact is about the 2billion people in the world experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity,” said the Deputy Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Abele Haile- Gabriel.
He said during the ongoing tenth Anniversary of the Food and Agriculture Organization, China South-South Cooperation Conference at the Speke Resort Munyonyo.
Abele said the continent has the highest number of people who do not have sufficient food to eat.
“The factor behind the unseriousness by most African countries to invest enough resources in sectors like Agriculture has a multiplier effect to ensure that they attain these goals,” said Abele.
He added that to overcome such challenges, it requires considerable financial investments to enable some countries to achieve the two goals especially on the SDG 1 which focus on poverty and SDG 2 which looks at ending zero hunger.
According to the Director-General, it will require an estimated investment of $140 billion per year of direct investments in Agriculture and rural development.
He cautioned African countries that do not have enough resources to invest in the sector to seek development partners that can support them like what the Chinese are doing in the South to South Cooperation.
“We need to achieve impact scale if the SDG is to be realized by 2030. South-South and Triangular cooperation have played big role in supporting least-developed countries, especially in the Agriculture sector.
“The cooperation has supported the participating countries in the fields of Knowledge exchanges, technology transfer, financing thus African states should cooperate with such development partners if they want to attain the SDGs,” said Abele.
Uganda’s Minister for Agriculture Animal Industry and Fisheries Vincent Bamulangaki Ssempijja commended the government of China for supporting Uganda’s Agriculture sector through the Uganda – China South-South Cooperation project.
The project has facilitated technology transfer and has enabled great improvements in the production and productivity of crop, livestock and the fisheries subsectors in Uganda.
