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.
7 September 2010 – United Nations aid agencies and their partners today launched an appeal for more than $14 million to help the victims of flooding in Burkina Faso rebuild their homes and livelihoods over the next six month.
The emergency humanitarian action plan unveiled today estimates that about 105,000 Burkinabé require assistance as a result of floods which have struck the impoverished West African country since early July. At least 16 people have reportedly died and many others remain missing.
The Sahel, north, north-central, eastern and central plateau regions were among the worst affected areas, with residents losing homes, livestock and belongings. Some villages remain inaccessible by land.
25 June 2010 – The United Nations has begun providing quality seeds to 100,000 vulnerable farmers in Burkina Faso, one of several nations in the Sahel region suffering from a growing food crisis that is putting millions at risk of hunger.
The distribution is part of an operation run by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), with funding from the European Union, aimed at boosting food production and improving food security for more than 860,000 rural households – about six million people.
More than 10 million people are at risk of hunger in parts of the Sahel due to drought and poor harvest, according to FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS).
Press Release No. 10/241
June 14, 2010 - The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today approved a new three-year arrangement under the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) for a total amount equivalent to SDR 46.154 million (about US$67.7 million) for Burkina Faso. The approval will enable the first disbursement of an amount equivalent to SDR7.454 million (about US$10.9 million).
The new arrangement is designed to support the authorities’ program to consolidate recent progress and enhance growth prospects and poverty reduction efforts. The program will focus on fiscal consolidation to sustain macroeconomic stability, and on a reform agenda geared to supporting private sector development.
6 May 2010 – A United Nations-backed pilot programme that supplies electric generators to rural women farmers in Burkina Faso, freeing them from lengthy chores so that they can devote more time to education, childcare and health care, is to be adopted on a national scale.
“I think this technology makes a huge difference to women’s lives,” UN Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Helen Clark told beneficiaries yesterday in Kienfangué, a town of 2,500 inhabitants near Ouagadougou, the capital of the poor West African country. “Pounding rice by hand is very hard and it takes a long time, but the generator can do it quickly.”
Press Release No. 10/150
April 14, 2010 -- A mission from the African Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) visited Ouagadougou during March 25-April 9, 2010 to conduct the sixth and final review of the authorities’ economic and financial program supported by the IMF under the Extended Credit Facility (ECF), and reach understandings on a policy framework for a three-year program under the ECF. The mission met with Mr. Lucien Bembamba, Minister of Economy and Finance, and other Cabinet members, Mr. Bolo Sanou, the National Director of the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO), and other senior officials. The mission also met with representatives of non-governmental organizations, the donor community, commercial banks, and members of Parliament.
12 April 2010 – The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today that its credit-based farming project in Niger has been so successful that the agency plans to scale it up and expand into Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal, which are also suffering food shortages.
“It shows that growing more food is not the only way of increasing poor farmers’ food security. Simple, storage-based credit systems can also play an important role in improving their livelihoods,” said FAO rural finance expert Ake Olofsson in a statement released today.
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.
9 March 2010 – Some 5,000 West African farmers are reaping the rewards from a United Nations scheme aimed at helping them export produce to the growing organic food market in the industrialized world.
The $2.4 million UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) project has helped farmers in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal and Sierra Leone to meet the necessary certification and adapt to the required methods to grow and sell organic products, according to a FAO news release issued today.
FAO noted that the organic and fair trade market in developed countries is expected to grow by about five to 10 per cent per year over the next three years, offering new opportunities for smallholder farmers in poor countries.
NOUAKCHOTT, January 7, 2009—It is early December 2009 and team members at the National Center for Locust Control are clapping their hands in delight. They have been able to control at a very early stage a major locust outbreak that could have affected food security in Africa’s Sahel region and the livelihood of its vulnerable communities.
“After years of hard work, the CNLA has finally reached the level of preparedness needed to successfully control locust emergencies and prevent the situation from worsening,” said Amadou Oumar Ba, the World Bank’s task team leader on the Africa Emergency Locust Project in Mauritania.
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