Oxfam International has expressed worry over the continued slashing of Agriculture budgets in most African countries amid a worsening food crisis.
A statement from the charitable organization says, total amount of money spent on Agriculture as a share of the national budget, dropped to 18 percent between 2019 and 2021 in 39 African countries.
“This is happening amidst a worsening food crisis that has already pushed millions of people in the continent to the brink of starvation. Some 322 million people in Africa were facing severe food insecurity in 2021, 58 million more from 2019. Today, the Horn of Africa and West Africa are facing one of their worst food crises in a decade with a combined 66 million people staring at starvation because of drought, uneven rainfall and conflict which have forced people to abandon their land or to lose their crop,” reads part of the statement.
According to Oxfam, some countries in southern Africa have witnessed a decline in cereal production thereby increasing malnutrition levels, with Angola, Malawi and Namibia topping the list.
Peter Kamalingin, Oxfam International Pan Africa’s Director said despite having about a quarter of the world’s agricultural land, the African Continent is still marred in an alarming hunger crisis.
He said the continent is spending more than $60 billion annually importing food that could have been produced locally if countries invested in their own farmers and food producers.
“Despite the deficit in the agricultural sector, African governments are spending billions of dollars ramping up their military defenses, which are fueling conflict, displacement and hunger,” said Kamalingin. “The amount spent by the 39 countries on Agriculture in the three years (2019, 2020, and 2021) is just 67 percent of the defence budget, clearly demonstrating that leaders have their priority upside down. The defence budget is higher than that of agriculture in over a half of the countries Africa.”
Oxfam has also blamed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank for contributing to African’s low agricultural production by recommending that governments should be implementing austerity measures and invest in cash crops instead of food crops.
To end hunger in Africa, Oxfam has recommended to African countries to increase spending in Agriculture to at least 10 percent of their total budgets, to prioritize small-scale food producers and to strengthen food system by dismantling the cartels that exploits farmers and consumers.
