Joint Press Release with the World Bank, FAO, and IFAD.

African leaders and international partners strengthen resolve to deal with short- and long-term effects of global food crisis.

Yokohama, May 29, 2008;

African Heads of State and government and the leaders of major international institutions, meeting on Thursday in Yokohama, Japan, have renewed their commitment to support efforts aimed at dealing with the short- and long-term effects of high global food prices in Africa. Tanzanian President and current Chair of the African Union, Jakaya Kikwete, chaired the session.

The meeting, held on the sidelines of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) and under the auspices of the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the World Food Programme and the World Bank, noted that the current crisis presented both a challenge and an opportunity for Africa, and emphasized the need to adequately address them both.

The leaders discussed ongoing measures to mitigate the impact of the crisis that is pushing an additional 130 million people into hunger, and efforts to strengthen safety nets such as scaling up of mother and child health and nutrition interventions and school feeding. They emphasized the need to ensure that emergency measures, including export restrictions on food and increases on export taxes, do not derail the progress achieved under past reforms or undermine the climate for reinvestment in African agriculture.

The meeting urged governments and the international community to support farmers’ efforts to take advantage of high food prices. There are over 80 million smallholder farmers in Africa who account for most of the region’s food production and who are central to any solution to the current food crisis and the long-term problem of hunger and poverty.

Participants pointed to the need to complement increased financial assistance with real breakthroughs in trade negotiations that will grant Africa’s producers access to world markets.

The leaders did not lose sight of the fact the Fourth TICAD conference was taking place at a historic moment – a time when the importance of agriculture in Africa’s development had been clearly demonstrated. They underscored the importance of defining a concerted, coordinated and comprehensive global response to the high food prices so that the very impressive economic progress of the last eight years in Africa is not derailed.

The meeting expressed its gratitude to the government of Japan for its leadership role on the subject and welcomed Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s commitment to highlight the issues discussed during the upcoming G8 summit which he will be hosting in (Hokkaido), Japan.