By Our staff reporter
African countries should continue to monitor progress toward the Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods, while engag-ing with regional commitments on environmental health, according to the 2018 Global Food Policy Report.
The publication reviews major food policy developments and events from the past year. Leading researchers, policy makers, and practitioners examine what happened in food policy in 2017, and why, and look ahead to 2018.
The seventh annual report explores the overarching theme of globalization and growing anti-globalization trends, looking at how current changes in the flow of goods, investments, people, and information impact global food systems.
The report states that country-level leadership and champions who work to end hunger and malnutrition are among the most important drivers of change. Some encouraging campaigns include China’s commitment to achieving Healthy China 2030 and Ethiopia’s Seqota Declaration on ending under nutrition by 2030.
The report underlines that in the face of economic slowdown and a decline in export revenues, attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) becomes critical to sustaining economic recovery.
Findings show that FDI flows to Africa decreased by 3 percent in 2016 to USD 59 billion. However, FDI levels vary greatly across the continent, with over half of total FDI directed to five countries: Angola, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Nigeria. Egypt’s increase of 17 percent in FDI reflects the discovery of gas reserves, while the 28 percent decline in the Democratic Republic of the Congo followed the sharp fall of global metals prices.
It also points out that in East Africa, FDI to Ethiopia increased by 46 percent, with rising investment in manufacturing and infrastructure. In West Africa, FDI grew by 12 percent, boosted by increased investment in oil and other natural resources in Nigeria and Ghana.
One of the biggest challenges for food security in a number of countries has been climate shocks. The report points out that continued poor rains in parts of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia in late 2016 and early 2017 caused a major food security crisis, particularly in Somalia and Ethiopia. As of December 2017, emergency conditions were expected to continue in parts of the region into 2018. The drought has significantly impacted agricultural and pastoral livelihoods in the Horn of Africa, and sustained humanitarian assistance will likely be needed.
The report further states that, although agricultural research spending and human resource capacity in Africa south of the Sahara have grown considerably, this growth has been uneven and trends are driven by large countries such as Ethiopia, Nigeria, and South Africa. “Many countries are overly dependent on volatile and unsustainable donor funds,” it reads.
Attracting FDI could become an issue in Africa, report states
Half of Ethiopia’s children work, according to survey
Just over half of Ethiopia’s 42.6 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 are working, sometimes causing them to miss out on their education, according to a survey from the Central Statistical Agency (CSA), on child labor. The report also states that a large majority live in Amhara and Oromia.
At the time the survey was taken Ethiopia had a population of 87.7 million including 37.3 million children. Of these children 30.4 percent were working while attending school and 20.6 percent were working without attending school at all; only 30.9 percent of the children were completely focused on school. There are reportedly 18.1 percent of children that do not attend school or work. Of all people seeking work, according to the study, 64.1 percent were between the ages of 14 and 17.
The survey estimates that about 26.5 million children between 5 and 17 work as household servants doing chores like babysitting, cleaning, cooking, shopping and caring for sick people. Girls are more likely to perform these jobs. Of children who work, 65.4 percent were between the 14 and 17 and 41.7 percent were between 5 and 11.
Agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors employ 89.4 percent of children. Many also work in wholesale and retail trades including fixing cars and motorcycles.
Based on the survey’s findings, the largest share of the working children (153,882 of 275,021 that the survey sampled) give all or part of their earnings to their parents or guardians. A large number of them (72,887) said they wanted to save their earnings. These were the youth’s most common plans.
It is estimated that 23 percent of all the children that are working engage in work considered hazardous. Very few of the children said they were working to learn new skills most said they were working to help their family.
Although it was rolled out last week at Capital Hotel, the survey was conducted between May and June of 2015. There were 550 interviewers. The study’s sample size included 21,526 children between the ages of 5 and 17.
CSA conducted the research in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and technical and financial support from the international Labor Organization.
A new green revolution work was launched by the European Union
A new green revolution work was launched by the European Union which will support medium and small industries to do more work in environmental and climate works.
The project which incorporates 100 leather, textile and art works will stay for the next three years and four months and will cost one million Euros.
Owners of the enterprises will get trainings to do more jobs in wastage management, re-using products and energy consumption.
The launching of the project was carried out last Thursday in the presence of Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce, European Union and other stakeholder who are working in the industry sector.
Low education financing continues to put children out of school
Financing education is becoming increasingly difficult and refugee children are among the most vulnerable group. According to Mary Joy Pigozzi, Director of Educate A Child, there are reasons why financing is an issue.
“First, many do not understand the real value of education in both economic and social terms. The data showing the criticality of investing in education is available. It is incumbent on all of us who care about the future to find ways to convince those making funding decisions of the importance of education. Furthermore, many people see education as a long-term investment and many, especially politicians, are more concerned with short term payoffs,” Pigozzi told Capital.
Educate A Child is a global program of the Education Above All Foundation that was launched in November 2012 that aims to significantly reduce the number of children worldwide who are denied their right to education. The program is committed to children who are out of school to help provide them with opportunities to learn and as such, it contributes to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4: to ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning.
According to Pigozzi, Educate A Child has striven for a large goal in a short period of time. By scaling up projects that have a proven track record of delivering quality primary education for marginalized and vulnerable children globally it has shown that there can be impactful progress in providing education on a grand scale.
“We are working with partners in around 50 countries, and together we have managed to leverage USD 1.8 billion to make the dream of education a reality for millions of children,” she said.
The Educate A Child program is working to overcome the barriers to education faced by many children all over the world. Ethiopia hosts the largest refugee population in Africa, yet refugee children have not been receiving education due to over stretched capacities.
“There is the risk that children who are forced to flee their homes, and travel to neighboring countries will grow up unable to read or write, starved of opportunity without access to quality education, and that is what my team is working so hard to prevent. We recognize that there are challenges in host countries to provide education for refugees, but this is their obligation,” Pigozzi says.
Regarding whether or not refugees should be integrated with their host communities in order to benefit already existing structures such as schools, Pigozzi says there is no simple answer to that.
“We need to consider both the host community, including its education system, and the needs of refugees. There is no single solution. But we need to recognize that currently the average life of a refugee in a camp is 26 years; according to UNHCR. Education is fundamental to their new lives, wherever those children find themselves; their education is also fundamental to the well-being of the host community,” she underlines.
In Ethiopia, the Educate A Child program has partnered with imagine1day International, a foundation that works to increase education access to more than 60,000 out of school children in the regions of Oromia and Tigray. It also works with Pact, another organization, to implement the Reaching Educational Attainments of Children in the Hinterlands (REACH) project. REACH is a one-year initiative that uses flexible and innovative models to expand opportunities to the most marginalized and hardest to reach children and families and help them access and complete education in Ethiopia.
