FAO Deputy Regional Representative for Africa Jocelyn Brown Hall who
urged journalists to help break down complex messages on development
into simple language. She said this would help boost efforts in
achieving development goals. PHOTO | COURTESY
Durban, South Africa
Journalists
have been challenged to help break down complex messages on development
into simple language that is relatable to both the ordinary citizen and
the policymakers.
Food and Agricultural Organisation
(FAO) Deputy Regional Representative for Africa Jocelyn Brown Hall said
this would help boost efforts in achieving development goals championed
by the UN, the Africa Union and countries such as Kenya’s Big Four
agenda.
“The media are an important partner as they set
the attitude of the public about food and agriculture,” Ms Hall told
journalists at a workshop in Durban, South Africa, which ended Saturday.
OVERSIMPLIFICATION
She,
however, cautioned that while breaking down the complexities of the
underlying causes of food and nutrition insecurity, there is a danger of
oversimplification that dilutes the message.
FAO Senior Policy Officer for Africa Dr Kofi Amegbeto, urged the
continent to shift to more sustainable production and consumption
measures.
“Food security is about how food is grown,
produced, traded, transported, pro-cessed, stored and marketed. It is
also about the fundamental connection be-tween people and the planet.”
OPEN MIND
Mr
Mohamed Atani of the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi
challenged journalists to approach development reporting with an open
mind and not look at it as something negative that has to be covered
from a point of view of threat.
“Look at waste
management, for instance. It can help absorb the 400 million un-employed
youth in the continent,” he said at the workshop organised to review
the capacity of journalists in understanding the messages of the UN Food
Agricultural Organisation-led ‘ZeroHunger’ and AU’s ‘TheAfricaWeWant’
campaigns.
BUZZWORDS
The
AU has, over the years, rallied its development aspirations around such
buzzwords as Agenda 2063, Malabo Declaration Goals and the
Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme, a policy, aimed
at reducing poverty and increasing food security in the continent.
Mr
Atani said for stories to become relatable and compelling there is a
need to re-late the cost of the inaction on food security with other
development challenges, such as youth unemployment in cities, and the
rise of informal settlements.
He was speaking even as
it emerged that Kenya is likely to miss the development goals it set for
itself with other African countries.
NOT ON TRACK
An
analysis of the 2018 African Union biennial review indicates that Kenya
is not on track to meet the Malabo commitment of ending hunger and
reducing poverty by half by 2025.
Instead, poverty has increased, according to the review, with 257 million or one in nine people in the continent facing hunger.
Only
20 countries out of the 47 members of the review mechanism are
considered to be on-track because they obtained the minimum overall
score of 3.94 out of 10 (as per the 2017 benchmark) but the continental
average is a paltry 3.6.
LOW BUDGET
Kenya
came under the radar for its low budgetary allocation to agriculture —
which fell further this financial year to 2.53 from the 3.5 per cent of
2016/17, the highest in recent years.
The paltry
allocation ran counter to the prominence and commitment accorded food
security in government policy as one of President Kenyatta’s four
flagship projects.
The country also fares badly on the
pledge to bring down undernourishment to five per cent or less by the
year 2025 and is off-track in achieving the six per cent annual growth
of the agriculture gross domestic product.
In a damning
indictment on African countries’ lip service to climate change, only
one country is on track with respect to aligning government budget-lines
on resilience building, the report shows.
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