G-8 Launches New $20B Africa Aid Pledge

World Leaders Commit to Help Boost Productivity of Small Farmers

(CBS/AP)  Updated 10:23 a.m. ET

World leaders said Friday that they want to provide $20 billion over the next three years to increase food production in developing countries and help the poor feed themselves.

The new goal was a $5 billion increase for an initiative that marks a shift in the global fight against hunger.

The leaders meeting in Italy said they wanted to focus less on sending food to the poor and more on helping small farmers in developing countries produce more and better crops.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi, the host of the meeting of the Group of Eight and other nations, said that leaders decided to raise the initial goal from $15 billion during talks held with African leaders in the morning. Washington was expected to commit $3 billion, and Paris $2 billion, delegates said, but it was not immediately clear if there were solid commitments for the remaining amount.

Asked about his appeal to fellow leaders for the aid, President Obama said he talked about his father, who was born in Kenya.

"The telling point is when my father traveled to the United States from Kenya to study ... the per capita income of Kenya was higher than South Korea's."

Now, Mr. Obama said, South Korea is industrialized and relatively wealthy while Kenya, as well as much of Africa, is still struggling economically.

"There is no reason why African countries can't do the same" and rise out of poverty with modern and open institutions, Mr. Obama said.

The United Nations welcomed the new strategy as an overdue shift away from a focus on delivering emergency food aid. Anti-poverty groups, however, said the funding was insufficient, and they have criticized developed countries for failing to make good on past pledges.

The G-8 talks were expanded to include emerging economies and, on Friday, African nations.

The initiative calls for helping the private agricultural sector and small farmers, particularly around harvest time, and puts emphasis on aid to families and women. It says that any improvement in agricultural production should be coupled with measures to help countries to adjust to changing conditions caused by global warming.

"We will aim at substantially increasing aid to agriculture and food security," the 27 nations said. They said the money would be dedicated to a "coordinated, comprehensive strategy focused on sustainable agriculture development, while keeping a strong commitment to ensure adequate emergency food aid assistance,"

Angola said it greatly appreciated the new commitments, saying they represented "very significant steps."

"Rebuilding the infrastructure and constructing new infrastructure in Africa will create wealth that will contribute to reducing poverty that unfortunately still exists in the country," said the southern African nation's ambassador to Italy, Manuel Pedro Pacavira.

In a separate statement, leaders said it was important to increase access to water and sanitation and the G-8 promised to assist African countries in doing so.

Food security, or ensuring adequate access to food, has jumped to the fore of the political agenda recently. High prices last year led to food riots in some countries.

While food aid will still be necessary to prevent people from starving, the new approach puts emphasis on a longer-term aim.

Increasing small farmers' productivity would have long-term impact on world hunger, regional trade and eventually help curb immigration toward Europe and other rich nations, delegates and experts said.

"It's a total shift, a welcome and encouraging one," said Jacques Diouf, the chief of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

"You solve the problem of hunger by giving the necessary tools to farmers who are in these poor countries so they can produce food," Diouf told the AP.

[credibility2]

Billions have already been poured into this continent and with very little improvement and return on the investmengt. It doesn't appear that the people trying to be helped want to do anything proactively to join the twenty-first century and help themselves; they continue to hold onto to their stiffling and backwards ways. It's as if they don't care to help themselves favoring handouts from other nations instead. Where is the return on all of this investment over the past decades? It's like pouring money into an bottomless hole. At some point, either they finally get it and do something about their own situation and not keep reverting back to being uncivilized, or it this sort of assistance and aid has to stop.

[Sky017]

South Korea is good now because since the 60s America pumped billions of dollars into that country to prevent the spread of Communism in Asia and from North Korea.

Africa is a recently mutilated country. What we know today as the division of countries in Africa only happened in 1885 when many European countries just carved up the continent among themselves. See the BERLIN CONFERENCE of 1885. That is very recent, considering that America came into its own over a hundred years EARLIER in 1776.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Conference

Furthermore, these new African states were colonized for many years by European Countries, before they gained independence.

Imagine if foreigners from space came down and said the division between Canada and America will not be a horizontal line, but a vertical one halfway between the continent. And those on the left side would now speak and write Greek, and those on the right would now speak and write German. How do you think that would play out?

This is what happened in Africa, but was 10 times worse. Natural land boundaries for pastures, sources of water etc... millenia of natural divisions were obliterated. And in some cases, former groups of people who were enemies ended up in the same country, when previously they would avoid each other's paths and space!

So it's a good thing if they get some more help now to recover. Look at Iraq and how many billions are being pumped into it to get a stable state.

This here is just food, or enabling people to better feed themselves-- not a handout. And if people are not gravely desperate for food they are far less likely to be enticed into hate and terrorism. So, overall this is good for world security as well (and MUCH cheaper than fighting retaliatory wars, like the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

[beaumuff]

How many small farmers here in the USA have we lost the last ten years. Maybe when Obama and family return from vacation and he sees that his celebrity staus has dropped like a rock he will remember this country for a change.

[mrleme]

WHY, I know Africa has needs greater than ours but it has become a welfare continent, this I read from one of it's own people. The money we give goes to the wealthy and minimal goes to the people in need. Geez I'm tired of watching the cheesecake shots of Obama and his family while many families have been struggling for an income. I just think both are inappropriate right now.

[ralpherus]

at some point, hopefully sooner than later, those crazy marxist wackjobs who run governments will come to understand a few simple truths. The climate happens. Stone aged continents are going to remain stone aged, and stealing our money to give to stone aged continents is a waste and wrong. Marxism is stupid, evil.

[whymayiask]

Mo money Mo money mo money.. When does it stop? Obama is handing out money like throwing candy canes at the Christmas parade...

Buy a man food for a year.. he'll have food for a year.

Teach a man to Farm.... have food for a lifetime..

We need the money here.. Not in Africa

[rf35]

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day.

Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

[whymayiask]

Mo money Mo money mo money.. When does it stop? Obama is handing out money like throwing candy canes at the Christmas parade...

Buy a man food for a year.. he'll have food for a year.

Teach a man to Farm.... have food for a lifetime..

We need the money here.. Not in Africa

[Joe_NY_15]

How about they direct the money towards making Africa a civilized continent.....with agriculture, and modernization.....instead of rampant poverty, starvation and tribal warfare.

[Questionews]

Through the 80's & early 90's a great many African nations were net exporters of agriculture products. From what I have read, after many of the farms were redistributed to the locals, the farms stop producing and the equipment was sold off, much of it to different countries. Many of the farmers were mercy of criminal gangs that took over the area & were forced to give a huge percentage of their capital or product, so most of them saw no future and bailed.

[Joe_NY_15]

by Questionews July 10, 2009 7:12 AM PDT

True, and also seizure of farms by radical governments.....that still doesn't excuse the continent's lack of modernization.

It's now the year 2009......tribal warfare with machete and AK-47 is a little primative....it shows that poverty is difficult to overcome.

[mym82]

You have to be kidding. My tax money should stay right here and help our own people first. Yes, it would probably go further to that if the "illegals" were treated as such and sent home. Maybe then my money would go farther to fixing our problems so that we could turn around and help others again. I say keep our funds here until we're ok!

[wtcmedic911]

nothing like spending good money after bad. for my entire lifetime we have given money, food, farming to africa. again and again and again. i dont know why they cannot do more for them selves. maybe its climate, lack of water, lack of ability, corruption etc.

[wyodutch]

Africa is swimming in overpopulation and drowning in incompetence... being nothing now but a pit into which the western nations have been wrongly shamed into filling with the sweat of their own citizens' brow.
.
America has no food reserves and is a debtor nation... how dare our "leaders" dictate to We, the People that we must carry the rest of the world on our backs.

[grabandgo]

seems like obama is taking care of his own kind before he takes care of his own country.

[nolalou]

Sorry grabandgo , but that is both a ridiculous and a racist statement!

[wtcmedic911]

nolalou- hes giving money to africa not to people aspiring to be farmers in the u.s. to purchase land and equipment. its going to africa thus grabandgo is right.

[vuenbelvue]

If the population of Africa can continue to increase to the 1 billion people projected they may not be in need of money. It sounds like they are quite properous if they can support this type of population increase. This could be all a sham with the money never trickling down to the little farmers as they tell the citizens whose taxes pay for this $15 billion.

[wtcmedic911]

they cant support the present population base. can breed like rabbits but have little concept what to do after that. simular to many urban areas here.

[stuart2020]

We've been broke. That's what is concerning so many, including me. Obamas spending is becoming alarming. We just cannot afford to do everything we may want. Obama is starting to act like a child in a candy store.

[Joe_NY_15]

Thank you Stuart, maybe you are not as much of an Extremist as I thought.....your fiscal conservatism tells you in your gut, that this spending is not sustainable, or re-payble.

Pledging money to Africa ? Who's money? ours ? I thought our economy was on the verge of catastrophe as Obama stated.

[mjvwsr]

Stuart - u da man

[beaumuff]

I thought Obamma said we were broke?