Honorable Ministers
Distinguished Parliamentarians
Leaders of Development and Development Education
Ladies and Gentlemen

Thank you very much for inviting me to be part of this celebration of World Food Day. It is a challenge to speak before you, because this circle of friends represents such significant expertise, such deep commitment and such unique leadership in the global campaign to reduce poverty and raise the dignity of all humanity. At the same time, it is an enormous pleasure to be amongst you and to salute you for your moral and wise influence within your nation and the global community.

I am particularly happy to be on such an ambitious and distinguished program of top personalities from the Government and civil society working together on concrete initiatives. It is my pleasure to work especially closely, your distinguished Minister of Development Cooperation, Evelyn Herfkins, who will speak later in this program. She and I have been meeting here with a distinguished group of development leaders from Africa and the donor countries in a very special forum which we call the High Table. This is now an annual meeting of ministers of finance from Africa and development ministers from the OECD which allows us to work on problems and relationships in an informal setting. We are often able to be be far more efficient and creative than when we work through much more formal channels. The Economic Commission for Africa is happy to host the High Table as one of a number of innovations to bring policy makers together more productively.

The Government of the Netherlands is an active participant in our initiatives. Minister Herfkins is a particularly valued leader in international development, known for her bold innovations over the last few years and her strengthened partnerships with like-minded donors and the international community.

On September 11^th the solidarity of the global community was given a new test when terrorists smashed the World Trade Center taking the lives of nationals from 78 countries. I want to express my deep condolences for the many losses of citizens of this country which took place in that mass murder. We have all been deeply troubled by wondering how the many issues of development will fare in an age of heightened security and terror. It is far too soon to know whether our issues will move to the back burner, or whether we will all be seen correctly as part of a new global solidarity required for social and economic progress and strengthened community. It is a challenge for the UN, a challenge for leading donors and a new challenge for Africa.

So it is in a most somber frame of mind that I join you. Our political climate has become much more difficult. And this is on top of food issues that are already serious in Africa.

Let me speak about food issues from three perspectives: first, that of nutrition and survival; second, that of production; and third, that of marketing. It is certainly appropriate for World Food Day to concentrate on the nutrition and survival aspects of food supplies, but as we in Africa consider our relationships with Europe, all three aspects are critical and inter-related.

So let us first turn to food as nutrition and survival. There has been a lot of progress on increasing the proportion of humanity with adequate nutrition. If you look over the past 30 years, as did the FAO Committee on World Food Security in its meetings four months ago, you will see that over the last 30 years the percentage of the population in developing countries classified as undernourished was cut in half, from 37% to 18%. The regional record is dramatic: in East and South East Asia the proportion of population classified as undernourished was cut by 70%. Near East and North Africa the drop was 60%; Latin America the decline was 42%; and South Asia the drop was 40%. But in Sub-Saharan Africa the story is dramatically worse. Thirty years ago 34% of our total population suffered from malnutrition and today that figure is exactly the same. But since the population in Sub-Saharan Africa has more than doubled in the same period, we now have 100 million more people suffering from malnutrition than we had 30 years ago. This is bad enough, but our prospects are worse, if current trends continue. The influential International Food Policy Research Institute predicts rising hunger in Africa and that by 2020 Africa might have 49 million malnourished children, a rise of 50% over current levels, unless we can change course.

Worldwide, 12.2 million children under age five die annually, 54% of those from malnutrition. Jim Grant, the late distinguished leader of UNICEF, used to talk about the loud crises and the quiet crises. With the sinister work of Al-Q’aeda, we are living now through a loud crisis. But the quiet crisis of the death from malnutrition of children aged five and under, beggars the imagination. It is the equivalent loss of human lives of a World Trade Center disaster every eight hours. No one needs to be told about the loud crises, but we have a major job of public education about the quiet crises.

Just in the last decade there has been nearly a 25% reduction in the deaths of these children in all developing regions of the world….except for Sub-Saharan Africa, where the drop has been only 3%. In absolute numbers the mortality rate for children under five in Africa is two to three times as great as in any other region of the developing world, and, by the way, 25 times higher than the OECD countries.

As you know, the World Food Summit in 1995 set goals to accelerate the reduction in malnutrition and child mortality. The meeting now hopefully going ahead in Italy next month to assess the first five years of efforts towards those goals, will find that the global reduction in malnourishment is way off schedule. Instead of an annual reduction

of 20 million per year of those suffering from malnutrition, a reduction of only 8 million per year is being achieved. If one looks at the list of the countries worst off in terms of nutrition, one can spot the problem. Of the 23 countries where nutrition problems are most severe, defined as those where the per capita kilocalorie deficit is over 300 per day, 19 are in Africa. The situation is bad, but not hopeless. Ghana and Nigeria have seen rapid improvements in national nutrition standards.

But, in general, why is the situation so disappointing in Africa? I think there are three reasons.

First, is the havoc which military and political instability plays in food production and nutrition. At the top of the list of those countries in Africa with the largest per capita food deficits are Somalia, Mozambique, Burundi, Liberia, Congo, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Niger and Ethiopia, all countries in which major military or political destabilization is taking place or has recently taken place. So much progress depends upon peace and security, a perception which every country now feels with fervor. I salute the Netherlands for its on-going concerns with small arms and conflicts in Africa, with your efforts on security and stability, and I can only encourage you further in your efforts to create an international political climate which can more reliably help solve these problems.

The second explanation is poverty. Some 300 million Africans live on less than 1.5 Guilders per day. Not surprisingly, research by FAO has found a close link between economic status and nutrition. The good news is that even modest economic growth translates quickly into nutritional gain. If you look at micro credit projects, the very first expenditure when there is added income is to assure a second meal a day, or to buy vegetables or a bit of fish to add to the starch.

And the third explanation is that even good production in a country is no guarantee of lowering malnutrition. Some of the best work by African researchers on nutrition is tracing each and every step to assure less post-harvest losses, more efficient milling, wiser policies of distribution, food preparation which maximizes nutritional value, and safety nets for the poorest.

If one were to summarize the situation of global malnutrition, I am sorry to say that increasingly it is an African problem. We could easily be lulled into focusing too much on the global targets for development and food security. I support the targets, but I the fact is that the very strong progress in other parts of the world, notably in Asia, sometimes obscures from our concerns the area of the world where poverty and malnutrition is the deepest. Therefore, as you create policies and as you educate about food as survival, I hope you have both a global and a region-specific perspective. And as you focus on Africa, I hope that the international community pays close attention to those in Africa really wishing to tackle these problems. Thankfully, there are many.

The second aspect of food that I want to discuss is production. Again I do so with trepidation since this country has some of the world’s finest experts in production, particularly in tropical agriculture.

I think the experts will agree with me that food production trends in Africa have been very disappointing. Basically, for the last decade food production per capita has been stagnant and that is fully reflected in the static proportion of our population suffering from malnutrition, that I indicated a few minutes ago.

There are many explanations for this situation. The most worrisome to me is the declining fertility of soil in Sub-Saharan Africa. Very thin soils, with little fertilizer and pesticides, and with ever shorter fallowing periods denying the soil a chance to recover from hard use, results in a continuing erosion of the fundamental basis of agriculture in Africa, our land. We face major challenges in finding economical methods of irrigation, in developing reliable systems of agriculture, and in developing the supporting human and physical infrastructure. Behind these challenges are both policy and program issues. Uganda, Botswana, Ghana and Mozambique are among only a handful of states giving a proper priority to agriculture. But, I am sorry to say, the lack of priority among African states in facing their agricultural production challenge, is fully matched by a lack of priority among Africa’s development partners.

Agriculture and rural development have become greatly lowered priorities in donor agencies. Many of us know the reason for this. Ex-post evaluation evidence for agricultural projects in Africa has been poor. But rather than gird their loins and redouble their efforts, like risk-taking development institutions should, too many development agencies have read the results and practically quit the field. Well, we can’t quit the field as agriculture is our economic and survival backbone.

Similarly, the marvelous network of international agricultural research institutions, one of which is in this country, is not being given the priority it once held. And far too often, the support in higher education institutions in the West to partner with African centers and to help on African agriculture has languished.

There is a bipartisan effort going on in the States among NGOs and some leading political figures to raise the level of support for agricultural development financed by the U.S. aid program. I hope that similar efforts will be generated elsewhere so that bilateral and multilateral agencies again muster technical talents and finance to focus on agricultural production. But more than that, I believe it quite important in the G-8 and in other leadership discussions to help create a climate where agriculture is again given prominence.

Now let me turn to the third aspect of agriculture, that of marketing. Yes, we face policy, production and all sorts of other challenges in our agriculture. But we do produce. And we even have the ability to produce for export. But the world is hostile to our agriculture. Somehow, the terms of trade for our products have deteriorated markedly in the last decades. If they had not, our per capita income would be 50% higher. It is estimated that for every unit of currency which has flowed into Sub-Saharan Africa as capital inflow, 106% flows out, made up of 51% in terms of trade losses, 25% in debt servicing and profit remittances, and 30% in leakages into reserves build-up and capital outflows. This puts the terms of trade issue into perspective. The common perspective is that terms of trade issues are like the oceans. They are God-given and you can’t do much about them. Ah, but we are in the Netherlands so we know you can do something about the seas and you can also do something about terms of trade.

Rapid trade liberalization, structural adjustment, capital account openness and numerous other reforms in Africa have not been reciprocated in terms of better access to markets for African products, particularly its agricultural products. Massive subsidies to producers, particularly in Europe, and other forms of protection have hurt us far more than all the development aid has helped. The subsidies by rich countries of agriculture is estimated to be $360 billion per year, which results in a flood of product on world markets, lowering prices world wide. Not only are Africa’s impoverished economies denied a chance to compete, the consumers in the North are denied a chance to have competitively priced food.

While a magical solution would be to drop all the subsidies, we are all realistic enough to know that domestic political considerations do not permit magical solutions. But even a phased in 40% drop in agricultural trade barriers is calculated to have tremendous mutual gain. By the year 2005 it would provide a gain of $15 billion per year for developing countries and it would produce a tremendous $55 billion in gain for OECD countries. The gain to you and other OECD countries would arise mainly because inefficiencies in your systems would be reduced. The truly odd thing is that we in the developing countries find ourselves arguing more actively than those in developed countries to take steps that will benefit you far more than it will benefit us!

{There is a crucial need now, perhaps more than ever, for a coherent development relationship between Africa and Europe. Much of what I have just mentioned highlights a clear incoherence in Europe’s development policy towards Africa. On the one hand Europe has repeatedly trumpeted its willingness to help us, but on the other hand it repeatedly restricts our efforts to help ourselves, by obstructing our attempts to sell our agricultural products to European consumers. This, my friends, is akin to giving a drowning man your right hand with a smile, while simultaneously pushing his head underwater with your left. The facts speak for themselves. Africa’s share of world agricultural trade is declining, yet the EU still places many obstacles in the way of market access for African nations. The agricultural subsidies which European farmers hold so dear equal Africa’s combined GDP.}

In an era when sensible policies have so often been suggested to Africa, let me help return the gift with a few specific policy recommendations for you as members of the EU.

The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy is uncommonly harmful to Africa. It will take real leadership to change that policy to one in which benefits are mutual with developing countries, not just selfish for your producers. A similar approach is needed for the Common Fisheries Policy. In the same re-examination there needs to be a new common sense to sanitary standards in the name of food safety. For example, the new rules on aflotoxin residues in theory could save 1.8 lives per billion people, but they already cost African exporters over $600 million per year in exports. There are a whole host of allied policies harmful to Africa, worthy of a special political leadership to link the interests of African producers and European consumers.

So we start with something simple, food, and we find a whole set of inter-linkages of interests and abilities between countries like The Netherlands and the continent of Africa. We share the human concern for food for survival, we share capabilities and interests which need to be expanded and made urgent for food production, and we share a common fate in terms of economic benefit, for a world in which agricultural trade can finally reap the benefits of interdependence.

{But it is not just in the food sector where we are calling for change. As well as reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy, Africa also needs a new approach from Europe in the negotiations to create a rules based world trading system under the framework of the WTO. There are some in Africa with concerns about an open trading regime, but at ECA we believe that substantial welfare gains are obtainable from more open and less distorted markets. Research estimates suggest that the global gains from liberalisation of both agricultural and manufacturing industries is estimated at $123 billion, with most of those gains going to developing countries. So, for the sake of coherence I believe it is essential that your WTO negotiating positions are fully in line with your professed development objectives. To date that has not been the case.}

{European aid funds have played an important and at times controversial role in Africa over the years so it is important that I briefly mention my views on how donor aid can also be linked to a coherent development policy. In the field of aid, there has been too much waste in the past. Europe therefore needs to be more effective aid in its grants. We, in Africa, must at the same time put our house in order to show that we can use donor funds wisely. The move towards intensified programme support to good performers by your government is therefore a good example of a move towards mature aid relations. To conclude I would say that a coherent European development policy is one which links trade, aid, debt relief and investment issues to create a holistic framework for financing and supporting Africa’s development. }

I am here among friends I admire. In this city of international justice and international responsibility, in this city of sensitive and enlightened national leadership, let this day be a day of commitment to an Africa which can survive; where there is food on the table; where food security, growth and international engagement are all encouraged and welcomed. To me, this is the meaning of World Food Day. It is a day in which commitment is made to the actions needed for a truly just humanity.

Thank you and Godspeed in your good work.