Feed the Future, an interagency initiative led by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), recently added the DRC and seven other African countries to its list of “target countries” in which the U.S. takes a coordinated approach to address the root causes of poverty, hunger and malnutrition. In addition to the DRC, the other nations recently added to the list are Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia. “The United States is there for African countries in this unprecedented crisis, because that’s what partners do for each other,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during an August 8 speech in South Africa.
Working with local groups
Feed the Future works with local governments and agricultural organizations to help farmers expand their output and maintain higher productivity levels. Among the program’s priorities are to:
Reduce hunger among women and children.
Build private sector partnerships.
Expand use of technologies that benefit communities.
The Feed the Future program complements the African Union’s own Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program, in which African governments agree to allocate at least 10% of national budgets to agriculture and rural development. In June President Biden announced $2.76 billion in U.S. funding to help protect the world’s most vulnerable populations and mitigate the impacts of growing food insecurity and malnutrition. “Our African colleagues made clear that, beyond emergency relief, what they really want is more investment in agricultural resilience, innovation, self-sufficiency,” Blinken said. “We’re responding to those calls.” *Share America