Economic mismanagement by African leaders poses a greater threat to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) than the current global financial crisis, the Vice President of The Hunger Project (THP), Dr Fitigu Tadesse, has observed.

He said with proper management of the economy and adherence to good governance and good democratic practices, Africa could produce enough food to feed its people and even export some to other parts of the world.

According to Dr Tadesse, in spite of the effects of the financial crunch, it was still possible for Africa to eradicate hunger and poverty, as well as achieve the other targets of the MDGs by their first and second time lines in 2015 and 2025 respectively.

"Africa has enormous natural resources such as oil, gold, cocoa and coffee. If African governments use these resources judiciously and they focus on more trade and less aid, and if the international community fulfil their promise to give financial support to Africa, it is possible to achieve the MDGs", he told the Daily Graphic on Saturday.

Dr Tadesse, however, pointed out that achieving the targets of the MDGs required African governments to be committed to good governance, good democratic practices, political stability and respect for the will of the people.

He commended Ghana for making positive strides towards such commitments, describing the country as the hope of Africa and urged other African countries to emulate Ghana in order to promote development.

Dr Tadesse said agriculture was crucial for Africa's development and stressed the need for African governments to promote the modernisation of agriculture, while projecting it as a lucrative sector and not just one meant for the less educated.

"Agriculture in Africa must be modernized; it must have its value. It’s not only for people who are not educated," he emphasised.

Dr Tadesse, a former Ethiopian diplomat, is on a working, visit to Ghana to assess the progress of projects initiated by The Hunger Project -Ghana (THP-Ghana), the local branch of THP, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) with the principal aim of reducing hunger and poverty.

He will visit some communities in the Eastern Region where THP-Ghana has built a number of epicentres to expose the people to various initiatives aimed at making them self-reliant and ensuring food security, as well as reducing hunger and poverty.

The epicentres are used by the NGO as a strategy to mobilise the communities, empower and support women in income-generating ventures, and collaborate with district assemblies to execute the goals of reducing hunger and poverty.

The Hunger Project supports the selected communities with micro-financing and in agricultural ventures. It also facilitates the building of food banks in the communities in the quest to ensure food security and reduce hunger.

Furthermore, the project seeks to create banks in the communities at the end of the five-year operation of the epicentres to enable the people to have easy access to finance for their enterprises, thereby creating wealth and reducing poverty.

Dr Tadesse described the progress of the epicenters in the country, particularly the level of understanding and involvement of the communities, as very amazing.

He expressed optimism that with the kind of interest being shown by the people in the projects, those communities would be able to achieve the set targets of the MDGs on schedule.

Dr Tadesse admitted that the global financial crisis would have an effect on the THP's financial capacity to deliver its projects, but expressed the hope that the organisation would endeavour to achieve its goals of fighting hunger and poverty.

He said one of the strategies THP was adopting to reduce the impact of the financial crunch on its operations was to team up with other NGOs committed to a similar cause to pool their resources for their intervention programmes.

"The (financial) crisis is an unfortunate and temporary impediment", he remarked, expressing the hope that by 2011, the crisis would have subsided and everything would then taken the normal course.


Source: Daily Graphic