How to reduce hunger in the world
The human race is one family, regardless of nationality, religion, race or colour. We all have the same blood running through our bodies. We are all citizens of the world. When one suffers everyone does!
There is tremendous suffering going on in the world. Over 850 million people are hungry, with over 150 million children malnourished. While progress is being made, we are not winning the war on global hunger. There cannot be peace in a world that is hungry.
Hunger persists in regions and places going through conflicts, wars and fragility. Those who suffer the most are women and children.
When the ego and pride of the mighty clash, the consequences are felt by the weakest among us: children. They do not create wars but the world’s children suffer from it the most.
The pictures of walking skeletons breaks our hearts, eyes so hollow, with hearts beatings from skeletal stomachs which seems to say: “mama why am I not getting food?” But their mamas are also not getting food.
God made the stomachs to be filled, not to go empty. Today the budgets spent on the military far exceed what we are putting up to improve agriculture and feed ourselves.
The world cannot plough with guns; and beans and rice seeds are needed more than bullets. Seeds give life. Bullets end life.
In the 700s, a Bible prophet by the name of Isaiah urged that the world should turn its swords into ploughs and spears into pruning forks and that they learn to cease from war.
Wars build nothing. To secure our world we must end the endless desire to look for reasons for conflict. Let’s instead find reasons to increase support for millions of the poor to feed our world.
For a peaceful world will be a food secure world.
There must be accountability to the poor. And we must reduce global income inequality. Think about it only 1% of the rich in the world own almost 50% of global wealth. The poor are stuck only to end up eating crumbs, if any at all, that fall from the tables of the rich. We need wealth, yes, but we need wealth for everyone not just a few. The sense of exclusion and lack of equity or fairness often drives conflicts.
But nothing drives poverty more than corruption. Corruption is like a blazing fire, it destroys everything in its path. Children cannot go to school or attend poor schools. Hundreds of millions go hungry every day. People living without insurance, who at the first illness spend their entire livelihoods just to survive, if ever they can.
The hope of the future, the youth, waste on our streets. Millions go without health insurance. Those who hoped they would make it in the cities end up in the world’s growing urban sprawl and slums, their future drowned.
Yet resources meant for them are lost to the rising tide of corruption. There is a compelling need for public accountability for the people, especially for the poor whose only hope is for governments to help them unlock possibilities for a better future, for them and their children.
I remember my time as Minister of Agriculture in Nigeria when I had to fight corruption. We succeeded in ending 40 years of corruption in the fertilizer and seed sector, using a simple tool: mobile phones, to deliver electronic vouchers directly to farmers. This allowed them to buy seeds and fertilizers themselves from the private sector suppliers. We cut off the middlemen; the rent seekers, who for decades have gotten fat on Government contracts, while the poor were drained. We ended Government direct distribution of seeds and fertilizers.
It was tough, but it worked. Within four years the system reached over 15 million farmers. One of the farmers, a woman, told me, holding up her phone to show me she’s received her electronic vouchers: “now we can live with pride.”
This electronic wallet system for farmers is now going global and now, at the African Development Bank, we are helping to expand it across several African countries.
The poor do not need handouts, they need accountable governments. The UN estimates that corruption costs $3 trillion per year globally, in terms of bribes and stolen monies.
Just think of what that can do.
The World Economic Forum estimates that it’ll take $116 billion per year to feed the world and end hunger. It’ll take $8.5 billion per year to eliminate malaria. Now, that’s only 0.28% of what’s lost to corruption globally every year. It’ll take $26 billion per year to send all kids in the world to school. The International Atomic Agency estimates that $31 billion per year will provide energy for all in the world. That’s just 1% of what’s lost annually to corruption globally.
Dr Akinwunmi Adesina is the President, African Development Bank (AfDB).