Purpose of Initiative: The President's Initiative to End Hunger in Africa (IEHA) is a multi-year effort to help fulfill the Millennium Development Goal of reducing the number of hungry people on the continent in half by 2015. The initiative focuses on promoting agricultural growth and building an African-led partnership to cut hunger and poverty. The primary objective of the initiative is to rapidly and sustainably increase agricultural growth and rural incomes in sub-Saharan Africa.

Partners

Governments: Canada (CIDA), the European Union, Germany (GTZ), Mali, Mozambique, and the United States of America (Department of Agriculture, U.S. Trade Representative, Department of State and USAID). International Organizations: the World Bank. The initiative is also supported by a number of African regional organizations, research institutions, universities, non-governmental organizations and civil society institutions worldwide. These include the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA), the Conseil Ouest et Centre Africain pour la Recherche et le Développement Agricoles (CORAF), the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Michigan State (MSU), the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), and the International Potato Center (CIP), the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN), and the global chocolate industry group.

USAID operating units in three of the countries (Mali, Mozambique, and Uganda) and three of the regions (West, East, and Southern Africa) prepared IEHA Action Plans laying out a vision for agricultural growth and poverty reduction involving partnerships with government, civil society, the private sector, and other donor groups. In FY03, USAID finalized three additional IEHA action plans (Ghana, Kenya, and Zambia).

Partnership Targets

Evidence from Africa and throughout the world demonstrates that few regions can emerge from poverty without, among other things, sustained agricultural growth, and that such growth requires a continuous flow of innovations toward increasing productivity. Smallholding farmer-led growth, in particular, relies on increased productivity and more competitive markets. Both requirements offer numerous opportunities for high-impact USG investments, such as:

• Harnessing the power of new technologies and global markets for agricultural growth. Science and technology can help bring improved varieties of key staples to African farmers, reduce risks faced by small farmers, and provide a buffer against famine.

• Improving the efficiency of markets and trade. This contributes to agricultural growth by raising African competitiveness in export and domestic markets, connecting African farmers to consumers, and integrating African countries into global markets.

• Enhancing training and leadership development services to help community- and producer-based organizations contribute to agricultural growth.

• Developing human capital, infrastructure and institutions as basic building blocks of agricultural growth.

• Integrating vulnerable people and countries toward transitioning into sustainable development processes.

• Providing environmental management skills to encourage agricultural and rural-sector growth through the conservation and production of environmental goods and services that generate public and private economic benefits.

• Over the course of 2003, great strides were made in setting up the support structures needed to ensure that IEHA investments in African agriculture were implemented successfully. Twenty-three additional technologies to improve agricultural productivity -- from improved varieties of cassava and bananas to new techniques for applying fertilizer -- were distributed in several African countries in collaboration with over 400 organizational partners.

• In FY03, the Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System developed in the first year of the Initiative was rolled out to IEHA partners. Workshops were held across the continent and partners identified on monitoring and tracking impacts of IEHA investments, supporting strategic planning, and facilitating analysis of investment options to tackle hunger and poverty in Africa.

• All participating USAID Missions will be reporting quarterly on the number of private-public partnerships formed. For example, the Southern Africa regional development office (REDSO) adapted an innovative tool, the Partner Institutional Viability Assessment (PIVA) in 2000 to collect data on its key partners' institutional capacity. The PIVAs demonstrated that USAID had been overly optimistic about the viability of key partners and that all of them needed more capacity strengthening than we had at first anticipated.

• Perhaps the most important dimension of IEHA's partnership activities is the focus on harnessing the power of the private sector as the engine for reducing hunger and poverty. In nearly all IEHA target countries, USAID works with governments and industry to improve the policy, regulatory, and institutional environment needed for enterprise development. Using IEHA resources, USAID also works with associations of agricultural producers, processors, and traders to reinforce business skills. IEHA also takes advantage of USAID's Global Development Alliance to create public-private partnerships that stimulate rural income growth.

• A regional biotechnology program was launched, based on exhaustive consultations with regional stakeholders and collaboration with COMESA, the Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project (ABSP) II, and USAID's Program for Biosafety Systems (PBS). These projects will help African governments develop safety and use protocols for adapting biotechnology into their agricultural systems, including new plant varieties that resist disease and have increased nutrition value.

IEHA continues to build upon the momentum of the past year with several key activities. These include a number of workshops, assessments, analytical work, and expanded country coverage. IEHA will expand coverage by finalizing and implementing Action Plans for Ghana, Kenya, and Zambia in addition to selecting the final three IEHA focus countries. USAID will continue developing transition plans for countries that face enormous humanitarian emergencies but currently lack the enabling environment required to support the IEHA growth agenda (such as Angola and Ethiopia).

Resources

The Initiative to End Hunger in Africa was formally launched in August 2002 at the World Summit on Sustainable Development with an initial FY 2003 U.S. commitment of $28 million in development assistance resources to supplement USAID investments in African agriculture. A total of $34.6 million was obligated to IEHA in FY03. Using that core funding, USAID dedicated another $117 million in development assistance as well as at least $7 million in food aid resources to activities designed to deliver on the IEHA targets. Furthermore, many IEHA activities are being designed to leverage and track funds from the broad range of IEHA partners, including African governments, international development agencies, private sector investors, civil society, universities, and a broad range of interest groups that provide support for African development

USG Primary Points of Contact: USAID: Jeff Hill (202-712-5256; jehill@usaid.gov)

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