Famine is again stalking Africa.

Towards the end of 2016, at least 30 million people in Africa will face starvation. The effects of global warming – rising surface temperatures, falling precipitation levels, increasing salinity – are visibly affecting the continent. Able-bodied young people move to the cities. Many try to cross the Mediterranean to find work elsewhere. Highly qualified professionals, including nurses and doctors, come to the West to find better paid jobs.  Corruption, in which we are often complicit, is commonplace. 

Farming employs 80-85% of the continent’s population; and yet, since structural adjustment changes imposed by the West’s economic interventions in the 1970s, no sub-Saharan African country has been able to establish effective mechanisms to support agriculture.

Producers and exporters of tea, coffee, cocoa, fruit and flowers are doing well: they appeal to foreign investors, who can sell onto their own secure market; local governments support them out of desperation for foreign currency.

Meanwhile, millions of ordinary people are starving. 

Smallholder farming – Africa’s lifeline – faces a crisis. At Christmas, emergency appeals will be launched to relieve famine across the continent. Western governments will respond, celebrities will show support, and the rest of us will give generously.

We the assigned appreciate that the government currently devotes its spending on aid to fragile countries; but these are often short-term measures, designed to increase Western security and reduce migration, that don’t alleviate longer-term challenges which cause the root problems. The UK must put farming first in its long-term development policy.

We ask the Department for International Development to address the long-term causes of poverty across Africa by properly investing in its future. Current policies often leave the poorest and most marginalised trapped in the poverty cycle. The answer is a consistent, concentrated and cooperative effort to support and develop farming at the grassroots.

We ask the DfID to:

• Support the goal of food sovereignty and self-sufficiency across sub-Saharan Africa;
• Support education in rural areas, particularly for women, who constitute the majority of farmers;
• Invest in rural infrastructure (roads, irrigation canals, water reservoirs, solar energy, warehouses, food processing facilities, etc.);
• Introduce IT initiatives in local and/or minority languages, to offer support to the most marginalised communities;
• Encourage farmers to use the best local techniques and tools to develop strong, local communities;
• Discourage unsustainable techniques like chemical fertilisers and infertile GM seeds being imported;
• Empower farmers to retain land and resist foreign land grabs.

The UK has a proud record of leading global development strategies. Our government can make a change and save millions of lives.

Sign this petition to agree that we must #PutFarmingFirst.

The petition was launched by GRASSROOTS AFRICA, a not-for-profit organisation offering an online agricultural advice service to farmers at the grassroots across Africa, using knowledge offered by a large pool of practitioners in relevant fields. Its director, Benny Dembitzer, is an international development economist who has worked in 35 African countries. He was a member of the team awarded the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize.  

 If you would like to learn more, please visit: http://grassrootsafrica.org