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African Development Bank (AfDB) President, Akinwumi Adesina, has reaffirmed his commitment to ending hunger and malnutrition in African.
Speaking on the theme of the G20 Rio Summit “Building a just world and a sustainable planet,” he admitted that the major focus was the G20’s Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty, an ambitious initiative led by the current G20 Chair, Brazil, which seeks to unite developed and developing nations in eradicating hunger and addressing inequalities.
According to him, the Alliance launched a range of coordinated actions which include expanding the production of healthy food and developing sustainable agriculture.
He explained that Africa, which accounts for more than a third of the world’s hungry people, was central to that.
According to the 2024 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the world, 20.4 per cent of Africa’s population are facing hunger. Adesina said: “In Africa over 280 million people suffer from hunger, some 38 per cent of the hungry people in the world.”
He stated this at the 2024 World Food Prize Norman Borlaug Dialogue in Iowa last month. “Hunger is the worst form of deprivation. The mind, the body, and the soul are shrivelled by hunger.
Hunger strips away human dignity,” he added. The AfDB president stated that the African Development Bank, along with the World Bank and several other development institutions, had affirmed support for the new Global Alliance initiative.
Specifically, the African Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank have launched a campaign to use IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) channelled through multilateral development banks under a hybrid financing mechanism, to scale up financing to back the effort.
“The African Development Bank’s Feed Africa strategy under its High Five priority blueprint steadfastly continues to bolster its objective of food security and resilience in Africa,” he noted.
The Brazilian Presidency is building upon the progress achieved under the Indonesian and Indian G20 Presidencies in strengthening multilateral development banks to become bigger, better and more effective institutions.
Meanwhile, Brazil has handed over the baton of the chair of the G20 to South Africa at the end of the Rio summit. The Group of G20 comprises 19 countries and two regional bodies: the European Union and the African Union.
The G20 members represent around 85 per cent of the global GDP, over 75 per cent of the global trade, and about two-thirds of the world population.
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