Regional Conference for Africa considers dual challenge Regional Conference for Africa considers dual challenge Agriculture ministers and other officials from 51 countries participating in the twentieth FAO Regional Conference for Africa from 16 to 20 February faced two major challenges - making African agriculture both more productive and less destructive. Agriculture is the dominant sector in most African economies, accounting for 40 percent of regional GDP in 1997. Yet, according to a paper presented to the Conference, the availability of agricultural land per caput is expected to drop from 0.80 hectares in 1997 to 0.38 hectares in the year 2020, mainly because of population pressure. So agricultural output will need to increase rapidly to feed a population that grows by 3 percent annually. In his address to the Conference, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf called for an increase in irrigated agriculture throughout the continent to boost production and address food deficiences.
Irrigation is an important element of security in the face of widely fluctuating rainfall.
It is also an ingredient of intensification considering that irrigated land is twice as productive as rainfed land. At the same time, urgent action is required to make African agriculture less destructive. Cropping activities, overgrazing, overfishing and deforestation are cited as the main causes of natural resource degradation in the subregion. The Regional Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, marked an opportunity for African ministers to assess results of the first year of implementation of the WFS Plan of Action. Moreover, while in other regions the absolute number of hungry is expected to decrease, albeit slowly, in the coming decade, in Africa, it is projected to grow.