Africa shows commitment to food security

AgRi stuFF ... Africa's es- tablishment of the Ecosystem- Based Adaptation for Food Security Assembly (Ebafosa) and the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (Caadp) points to a strong commitment by the con- tinent to achieve food security.

SIX African countries have established national branches of the Ecosystem-Based Adaptation for Food Security Assembly (Ebafosa).

The latest country to launch its national branch is Malawi, whose branch was launched by president Peter Mutharika.

The other five countries which have established national food security assemblies are Zambia, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nigeria and Mozambique.

Ebafosa originated from the 2nd Africa Ecosystem-Based Adaptation for Food Security Conference held in Nairobi, Kenya in July 2015, which was convened by the United National Environment Programme (UNEP) and the African Union Commission (AUC).

The conference adopted the Nairobi Action Agenda and a constitution, to establish Ebafosa - an inclusive pan-African policy framework and implementation platform to ensure ecosystem-based driven agriculture and its value chains, especially clean energy access to catalyse rural agro-industrialisation, enhanced access to markets and enhanced access to affordable agro-financing are up-scaled to being the norm in policy and practice across the continent.

Country branches are obliged to register local, continental and global actors within the country to facilitate their interactions and partnerships to achieve implementation. The call for the establishment of Ebafosa was further cemented by the Sixth Special Session of the African Ministerial Conference on Environment (Amcen), held in Cairo, Egypt from 16-19 April thus year.

This gathering agreed that Ebafosa falls under Amcen's decision on implementation of the 2030 Agenda for SDG's for African Union's Agenda 2063: A Contribution for the Natural Capital, which calls for the domestication of policies and legislation,especially on targeting the allocation of a portion of current natural resources earning for re-investment in highly catalytic sectors towards achieving SDG's, especially clean energy and optimisation of ecosystem-based adaptation driven agro-value chain and value addition.

UNEP defines ecosystem-based adaptation as the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services as part of an overall adaptation strategy. Some of the technologies involved are terracing to decrease water run-off and thus increase infiltration and improve the condition of agricultural production.

Amcen's Cairo conference also re-affirmed that adaptation to climate change is an important priority for Africa and that there is an urgent need for immediate and enough support for the implementation of the adaptation measures to cover agreed full and incremental costs.