The third session was on African leadership. The contribution by the Minister of State for agriculture and water was particularly interesting. It concerned the interventions that were tried in the past couple of years, which have made quite a difference in terms of yields and productivity. They have subsidised fertilisers and sought finance for farmers. There have been some interesting experiences in that regard. The Minister is young and dynamic so it was an interesting session.
The final session was on "Innovation in fighting hunger", which was introduced and chaired by Brendan Rogers of Irish Aid. The two speakers there were Dr. Akin Adesina, who is vice president of AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, and Ms Sheila Sisulu, who is deputy executive director of the UN World Food Programme. She explained changes in that programme's approach. For example, they are examining more local purchasing of food and a more diverse range of programmes.
All the speakers were practical and offered suggestions about how we should tackle hunger. In many conferences one finds speakers engaging in academic debate, but these speakers made practical suggestions.
When Mary Robinson chaired the third session, she raised some interesting issues concerning AGRA and the use of vertical or global funds. Dr. Akin Adesina from AGRA said they were incredibly important issues which needed to be dealt with, but he did not suggest how they might do so. Nonetheless, his presentation was very strong.
A strong call for action on policy change emerged from the conference. Some key suggestions were made and I have outlined a number of them. The first is that OECD countries should commit and move to an allocation of 0.7% of GNI to development aid. It is not something new and we all know about it. Ireland is clearly one of the countries on the road to achieving that. It was very positive that we could say so.
The second is earmarking of specific allocations to hunger within aid budgets, which is not a matter people spoke much about in the past. The Irish hunger task force report speaks of an allocation of 20%, for example, specifically to fight hunger. That arose out of some of the African suggestions. The Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme, CADAP, for example, which is part of the African Union economic development, suggests that each of the developing African countries should allocate 10% specifically to agriculture in their budgets. Only a small number of countries have done so. The standard in Africa is approximately 5% or 6%.
The third key suggestion is renewed commitment to supporting agricultural development, in particular, small-holder agriculture, in developing countries. I suppose people have perceived that there has been a move towards large-scale productive commercial farming and that we need to revisit small-holder agriculture given the high percentage of poorest people in the world who are small-holder farmers.
Another was support to empower the most marginal farmers, in particular, women. There was a strong recognition that empowering women was very important in terms of tackling hunger, especially with issues such as nutrition, behaviour change, dietary behaviour etc. There was a strong focus on empowering women and women farmers.
Another suggestion was for support to improve nutritional interventions, not just addressing severe malnutrition, of which I spoke earlier, but also the prevention of severe malnutrition. Obviously, that includes various aspects such as food security, nutritional education, behaviour change in terms of diets etc.
There was a call for support for social protection mechanisms in developing countries. We, in Ireland and in the West, are used to a welfare system and in many countries, particularly in Africa, there are very weak social protection programmes. There are quite a number of pilot programmes but not many that have gone to scale.
There was a call from a number of people for a global fund for agriculture and there was even a specific call for Ireland to be its first contributor. The expression used was not as a flag-waving exercise but as the first contributor to a multilateral fund.
The last issue was a need for political leadership to ensure resolution of issues around complicated processes, about getting support for agriculture and nutrition on the ground. There is a kind of ongoing tension between the call for this vertical global fund and the Paris declaration on aid effectiveness, and the need for ownership, harmonisation and alignment, with local governments basically being in charge of their own processes, but also the need to ensure participatory processes for the poorest people. As we know, for example, governance in Africa is weak. Part of the Paris declaration and the move towards good governance is around ensuring that poor farmers and poor people have a voice in the mechanisms that are meant to get support to them. What do farmers have to say about how they can access finance, for example, or how they can access seeds and tools? Are the systems in place working? There was discussion on how to merge that call for a global fund and reducing the bureaucratisation of aid, and ensuring that it fits in with participation and ownership by host governments and host communities.
Those were the key suggestions that came out of the conference. Many of them in many ways are similar to ones that came from the Irish hunger task force. Concern very much supports the practical recommendations in the hunger task force. We very much welcome the major cross-party support for the task force, which is very important.