Africa: Helping small farmers feed a continent

15 independent producers from Africa selected for Creative Producer Indaba

DAKAR: As an African Union summit on agricultural investments opens in Libya, donors and non-profits are calling participants' attention to the role smallholder farmers - mostly women - can have in feeding their communities.

Agriculture is an overlooked “emergency” that deserves as much attention as the global financial crisis, according to Kate Norgrove with Oxfam UK's office in Dakar, Senegal. “Nearly US$9 trillion has been injected into the global financial sector since January 2009 versus US$4 billion in global ODA [overseas development assistance] to agriculture. That is small change relative to the scale of the problem.”

Decades of declining production have pushed more families into hunger and disease, according to Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

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