37th CFS Plenary Session, 17-22 October 2011, Rome
The CFS is the United Nations' forum for reviewing policies concerning world food. It is the most inclusive international and intergovernmental platform for all relevant stakeholders to work together to ensure food security and nutrition.
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WASHINGTON, November 19, 2010—The World Bank has launched the second phase of the West Africa Agricultural Productivity Program (WAAPP-1B) in a bid to expand its support to food security in the sub-region by generating new knowledge and technologies.
Phase II of the program will add three more countries -- Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and Nigeria – to the Bank’s regional integration efforts through WAAPP to increase economic growth and help reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The US$122 million WAAPP-1B project was approved by the World Bank Board on September 30, 2010.
12 October 2010 – Nearly 1.5 million people have been affected by floods and 377 killed in Western and Central Africa, with Chad, Northern Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria facing a serious cholera epidemic, United Nations relief officials reported today.
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos is due to begin a four-day visit to Nigeria and Niger tomorrow to meet with relief organizations and local authorities as they battle the heavy flooding caused by torrential rains and exceptionally high water levels of the Niger and other rivers.
ABUJA, July 28, 2010— In Nigeria, the term “Fadama” is a Hausa name for irrigable land—usually low-lying plains underlaid by shallow aquifers found along major river systems. In addition to providing a source of water for livestock during dry seasons, fadamas also support large and diverse resident or transient wildlife including herbivores, carnivores and migratory birds.
The World Bank’s Fadama III project, a follow-up to the Fadama II project, which impacted the lives of rural farmers, raising their incomes by 63 percent, is showing early results in 35 Nigerian states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
9 April 2010 – Tens of thousands of children are at risk of severe malnutrition in Niger and neighbouring countries unless donors urgently provide more funds for humanitarian programmes, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned today.
Christiane Berthiaume, a spokesperson for the agency in Geneva, told reporters that UNICEF was very concerned that the ongoing drought in much of the Sahel region of Africa has created a food crisis that is jeopardizing the health of the region’s most vulnerable children.
Already an estimated 859,000 children under the age of five in Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, northern Nigeria and Chad are classified as needing treatment for severe malnutrition, she said.
25 March 2010 – The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Japan and a Nigerian cassava processing group today signed an agreement to support a project to improve cassava processing in a bid to enhance the quality and value of food in the African country.
UNIDO will facilitate the collaboration arrangement between the Japanese Government and Ifelodun Cassava Processing, a non-governmental organization, and provide technical assistance in the implementation of the project. The NGO received a grant of $97,023 from Japan while about $100,000 will be contributed by UNIDO.
1. The 5th CAADP Partnership Platform (PP) Meeting took place on 9-10 November 2009 at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, Nigeria to review progress and share experience of CAADP implementation since the last CAADP PP in Pretoria, South Africa in March 2009. The 5th CAADP PP was hosted by the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS) and supported by the African Union Commission (AUC), the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Secretariat and the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development. The meeting was held just prior to ECOWAS’s International Conference on Financing Regional Agricultural Policy in West Africa (ECOWAP/CAADP), which was also the occasion to sign the first regional Compact.
November 23, 2009—The World Bank’s World Development Report 2008 highlighted the key role of agriculture in meeting the 2015 targets laid out by the Millennium Development Goals. Soon after the report was published in late 2007, the global food crisis sharply underlined the need for sound agricultural policy and stronger agricultural information systems.
The World Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are working together on a new initiative aimed at improving agricultural data in Sub-Saharan Africa. At the heart of this project is engagement with government counterparts in both line ministries and national statistical offices to design and implement panel household surveys emphasizing agriculture.
10 November 2009 – Despite good global cereal harvests this year, millions of people in dozens of poor countries are in desperate need of emergency humanitarian aid due to stubbornly high food prices, the United Nations agricultural agency warned in a report released today.
Critical food insecurity is affecting 31 countries and the situation is particularly acute in East Africa, where prolonged drought and mounting conflict have left an estimated 20 million people in need of food aid, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).
15 October 2009 – Lake Chad, once one of the world’s largest water bodies, could disappear in 20 years due to climate change and population pressures, resulting in a humanitarian disaster in central Africa, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned today.
The lake – surrounded by Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria – has shrunk by 90 per cent, going from 25,000 square kilometers in 1963 to less than 1,500 square kilometers in 2001.
The 30 million people living in the Lake Chad region are being forced into competing over water, and the drying up of the lake could lead to migration and conflicts, FAO cautioned.
The spike in food prices of last year (2008) underscored what experts have been telling us for many years: the world's food systems are in crisis