Josefa Sacko, African Union Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Economy, Blue Economy and Environment, hopes that the final communiqué of the 36th African Union Summit, which runs until Sunday and brings together the 55 heads of state and government of the African continent, will mobilize more resources to end hunger..

With the start of the 36th African Union Summit today, one of the areas of concern for the heads of state and government gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is the food crisis, aggravated by almost three years of the Covid-19 pandemic and the war between Ukraine and Russia.

Josefa Sacko, African Union Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Economy, Blue Economy and Environment, was pleased that the African Union decided to extend the year dedicated to nutrition, which took place in 2022, until 2025, but she wants concrete commitments to emerge from this summit.

"I would like to see very concrete statements on this. The food crisis is on the agenda and now states are seeing that something has to be done. Our report was well received and reinforced by the member countries and I believe that the final communiqué of this summit will serve to mobilize more resources. We know the problem and we have the solution, we can't keep reaching out, the money is there somewhere and we have to invest it if we want to be credible and ensure a better future," she said in an interview with RFI.

In Africa, there are currently 282 million undernourished people, many of them children, which Josefa Sacko describes as "a fact of urgency", especially when the continent has the capacity to produce much more food than it does at the moment.

"60% of uncultivated arable land is in Africa, we have a lot of youth and we have water resources. It's unacceptable that we have 38 countries importing food," said Josefa Sacko.

The issue of food security has definitely entered the global agenda, but especially in Africa, where the consequences of the pandemic and war have been felt acutely.

"We had the shock of the Covid pandemic, our countries import rice and during the pandemic everything was canceled in exports, we didn't have these products to feed our population. We consumed a lot of rice and that was a lesson. The second lesson is the war between Ukraine and Russia, it's unacceptable that a continent with 1.4 billion inhabitants should import from a country with 43 million inhabitants," he said.

To respond to this, in addition to funds, more research is needed as many African countries are also affected by climate change. Something that, according to the commissioner, can be circumvented with more research and adaptation of agricultural crops.

"We need research and we need to invest. It's also up to the heads of state and that's why I'm asking for 1% for research," he concluded.