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Dr. Kanayo F. Nwanze President, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)

Transcript Seventy percent of the world’s poor live in developing countries in rural areas, and the majority of them are women and children. So our mandate actually is to through investments, working with governments and partners to help rural population, poor rural people to overcome poverty. The experiences we had in 2007 2008, was actually a call to action; it was a wake up call. And in that process, the Secretary General of the UN established a high level task force which has brought the agencies together working together; putting plans, you know, putting together programs and activities, and better communication. Also, out of that crisis arose what is referred to as amies or ami, if you want to say it in French it is an agricultural market information system where countries report, transparently, food stocks. That way, you can have information of where the shortages are likely to occur in what parts of the world based on, you know, droughts, impacts of climate change. And out of the G8 has emerged the G8 new alliance, which I serve as a member of the leadership council. So we do have, in a way unfortunately but also fortunately the food crisis has brought about a heightened awareness of the necessity to invest in agriculture but more importantly for us, to invest in smallholder agriculture in developing countries. Why? Because 500 million farms are basically the source of income, the source of livelihoods for the majority of the world's population, close to 3 billion. I mean, you cannot ignore them. So investing in smallholder agriculture but also simultaneously getting governments to invest in rural development, providing, you know, rural populations the same facilities you have in big cities, you know I mean, schools, clinics, communications, social services make it attractive for particularly the youth to stay in the rural areas. I think this is actually a major transformational change that is taking place. So we do hope that we have learned lessons and that we are preparing ourselves for future shocks which are bound to occur.

• published: 29 Sep 2014
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