Statement by Mr. Jacques Diouf, Director-General, FAO
Third Anniversary Commemoration of the President's 2007 Food
Security Pledge for Sierra Leone

Your Excellency the President of the Republic,

Mr. Vice President,
Members of the diplomatic Corps,
Honourable Ministers,
Your Excellencies
Ladies and Gentlemen,

At the World Food Summit: five years ago, held in Rome in 2002, the spotlight fell on the need for greater political will to fight hunger if the goal of halving the number of undernourished people in the world was to be achieved by 2015.

That Summit took place just one month after your acknowledgement of the right to food as a basic human right, and your historic pledge to do everything in your power to end hunger in Sierra Leone within your five-year term of office.

Excellencies,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Our focus today is to understand how to translate that pledge into practical action on a scale consistent with the size of the national hunger problem. Improving food security is clearly recognized as a fundamental element in the Poverty Reduction strategy Paper (PRSP), which has designated one of its three pillars as "Promoting pro-poor growth for food security and job creation". The PRSP provides a framework within which, we at FAO, and other development partners, can collaborate in targeting specific activities identified by the Government and people of Sierra Leone, especially in the field of agriculture, representing 44% of GDP and having been placed among the five development priorities identified for the country. Conversely, however, if hunger is allowed to persist, it will be hard to attain sustainable broad-based growth. The strong association between growth and poverty reduction, but also ending hunger to bring economic development, is evident. The inseparability of such notions is firmly recognized as they are treated together, as one, over-arching Millennium Development Goals. Accelerating growth, and ensuring the participation of people in that growth, is fundamental for poverty reduction.

Your Excellency,

You have looked upon food as a human right, making Sierra Leone one of the first countries in Africa to actively engage in translating the recently approved Voluntary Guidelines on the Progressive realization of the Right to Food, into culturally and socially acceptable action.

Your commitment to ending hunger marked the start of what I consider a very fruitful cooperation between Sierra Leone and FAO, as well as with other development partners, on food security issues. Sierra Leoneans have much to be proud of in their achievement towards improving both national and household food security over the past three years. The start-up conditions were extraordinarily difficult-a massive displacement of people, destroyed rural infrastructure and collapsed institutional capacities, especially within the Ministries of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security and of Fisheries and Marine Resources. As the country shifted from emergency towards rehabilitation and development programmes, these ministries took the lead in translating the concepts of FAO's Special Programme for Food Security into Operation Feed the Nation (OFTN), through which they began to work with other relevant ministries and civil society in implementing a progressively broadening range of actions aimed at bringing about rapid reductions in food insecurity. The initial emphasis of Operation Feed the Nation was on practical action with a strong community focus. It aimed to raise the capacity of groups of small-scale farmers to understand the underlying causes of their food insecurity, and to overcome them largely through their own efforts, with a minimum of dependence on outside assistance. This Programme is already present in every district in Sierra Leone. Some 26,000 farmers have participated in Farmers' Field Schools with the support of both the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security and NGOs, acquiring new technical skills and managerial abilities as well as growing self-confidence. As the Programme expands, to include some 200 000 farmers by 2007, farmers will increasingly assume a leadership role in educating new groups with the extension services ensuring quality and access to specialized advice.

In parallel with this, FAO and other development partners have teamed up with your Government to complete a wide-ranging review of the agricultural sector, including forestry and fisheries, setting the basis for policy reform and institutional development. FAO led this review, conducted jointly with the World Bank, IFAD and UNDP, providing a profile of Sierra Leone's agricultural development, strategies and programmes as well as its natural and human resource base and institutions. FAO, through its Investment Centre, has also assisted in identifying priority areas of investment within NEPAD's Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and has contributed to the preparation of agricultural and rural development projects in support of Operation Feed the Nation, which have been financed by the African Development Bank and by IFAD.

Excellencies,

Honourable Ministers

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Mr. President, I would like to pay tribute to the strong political will expressed by your government and to the very important contributions made to these initiatives by the Governments of the Federal Republic of Germany and Ireland, UNDP, the African Development Bank, IFAD, the World Bank and WFP. Thanks to the leadership and vision offered by your Government, we have been able to work together in a harmonized manner towards a common goal, also engaging the leading NGOs concerned with food-related issues.

Today is both a time for taking stock of achievements and for looking ahead. Much has been achieved, but a great deal remains to be carried out to ensure food security for every Sierra Leonean. Expectations have been raised and everything possible must be done to achieve them indeed, to live up to them. A starting point for future, medium-term development should focus on investment in water control and management, as well as in rural infrastructure especially in those rural areas of Sierra Leone mostly affected by the ten years of civil strife, which brought the abandonment of productive farmlands and the displacement of millions of people.

Your Excellency,

I look forward to learning today, how your Government sees the priorities for the next two years of your term in office. I also hope that this event will be seen as an opportunity for the development partners to show what role they will play in the successful implementation of the programmes put forward here today, and that they will formalize these commitments at the forthcoming Consultative Group Meeting to be held in Paris.

I hope that Sierra Leoneans, as usual, will rise to this challenge of leadership and share their pioneering experiences with other countries committed to ending hunger. FAO will continue to be by your side on the road to food security.

I thank you for your attention.