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“Africa must learn to feed itself,” Senegal and African Union President Macky Sall said at the opening meeting of the Dakar 2 Summit to Feed Africa: Food Sovereignty and Resilience. “To realize our potential, we need to allocate at least 10% of the national budget to the agricultural sector,” Sal said at a rally that included several African heads of state.
President Sall hosts a number of counterparts, including heads of state of Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Mauritania and Zambia, at the AfDB-co-sponsored conference on food sovereignty. All heads of state stressed the importance of food security for their countries’ political stability and security.
At the summit, co-hosted by the African Development Bank (AfDB), themed “Feed Africa: Food Sovereignty and Resilience,” three out of the world’s 850 million people live on the African continent. About 283 million Africans are starving, with 1 in 2019 suffering from hunger. This needs to be addressed, according to his Akinwumi A. Adesina, president of the AfDB Group.
“The Dakar II Summit will mobilize political commitment, development partners and private sector investment to establish much-needed policies and strategically drive action to deliver at scale. The landmark event will mark a tipping point towards food sovereignty and resilience across the continent.”
At the summit, Kenyan President William Ruto said the continent had lagged behind for too long and called for more action. **”Let me tell you, as the head of state of our country, the fact that we are having this conversation from our good continent and discussing food is not very interesting. We I think we should have a discussion that goes beyond food, 60 years after independence.”
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The three-day summit, held in Diamuniadio near Dakar, Senegal’s capital, will end on Friday, January 27.
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