The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has held a ministerial meeting to strengthen and accelerate national and regional efforts to address food insecurity in the region and long term development to enhance the resilience and livelihoods of vulnerable communities.
The meeting attended by ministers and head of delegations from IGAD member states also aims to identify common opportunities, gaps in implementing and accelerating sustainable national pathways for food security system transformation in the IGAD region.
The forum’s objective including facilitation of sharing practices and knowledge exchange between Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan, identifying common priorities to accelerate food security system transformation, secure ministerial approval and consolidate a harmonized and coordinate approach to food systems strengthening regional commitment.
Speaking at the event in Nairobi, IGAD Head of Mission in Kenya Dr. Fatuma Adan said that the agenda of the meeting was to discuss strategies, policies and systems on how to improve the food security in the region since the region has been having crisis including climate crisis, conflict and floods among others.
She noted that 21 percent of the 300 million people in IGAD were food insecure and the vulnerable people affected were women, children and adolescent girls specifically adding that IGAD convened to have a strategy system so that it could build food secure communities, countries and region.
“The food situation is not getting better due to climate crisis but countries are also investing heavily to ensure that they are able to cope up and build a resilient system that helps to cope with shocks,” she stated.
Resilience team leader for Eastern Africa Cyril Ferrand said that food security was an issue across the borders, but the region has made an effort in the past 20 years in bringing capacity to collect information, share and take some information.
He said that the translation of technically sound information into intervention that is basic and implementable is where IGAD is facing a little challenges but have made progress in the last 20 years.
“United development system is lacking a little bit scale, often there is investment in life saving that is significant when we face a crisis which unfortunately we do not see the same level of investment at scale for resilient investment,” he noted.
Ferrand said that if one wants to be transformative, they have no option but going faster in that scale adding that was missing in the region when they look to climate adaptation.
“This needs to be fixed now and the linkage between the UN activism and peace activism is going to be fundamental in changing the ways of doing business at the moment,” he said.
Programme Manager Ethiopian Union (EU) Delegation Stephen Wathome noted that food security was a cross border issue, creating a scenario where it was no longer a confining aspect to do with availability and accessibility of food to a specific country.
He said that all countries around were going to support each other in availability and accessibility, noting the major challenges affecting the countries in terms of food production included aspect to do with climate nexus, biodiversity among others.
“More less of governance aspect and coordination is increasingly becoming a concern where people are unable to have the resources for purchasing food even if the food are available,” he noted.
By Sharon Atieno
