A report which has been released by ActionAid has indicated that Rwanda is among the only three countries that is equipped to fight triple crisis.
Among 28 developing countries where ActionAid carried their study, Rwanda, Tanzania and Mali were the only three countries in a position to confront what they have called triple crisis involving the accelerating climate change, growing population and rising food prices.
The report warns titled ‘On the Blink; Who’s best prepared for a climate and hunger crisis?’ suggest that the triple crisis could lead to a collapse in global food systems by 2050.
According to the report Rwanda has programmes and political will including a 25 year plan intending to confront the triple crisis.
“Rwanda was the first country in Africa to sign on to the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), and has demonstrated a clear political will to decrease endemic levels of hunger and malnutrition,” the report read in parts.
In addition to doubling government spending on agriculture over the last few years, from a low of five per cent in previous years, Rwanda’s government committed an extra US$5 m (Est. over 2,9bn) in the agriculture sector for 25 years.
In February this year, Rwandan government announced its intension to undertake a countrywide restoration of its degraded soil, water, land and forest resources for the next 25 years.
It was in a bid to restore the lost forest cover that had since 1990 become a victim for agricultural activities and settlements triggering floods and heavy rains that not only destroyed crops but also human lives.
A predicted 30% increase in world population by 2050, together with the severe impact of climate change on harvests, a scene of food scarcity in decades is predicted.
This year’s famine in East Africa provided a terrible preview of how such crises could play out years to come, with severe drought, conflict over access to water and land, and high food prices interacting to push 13 million people into starvation.
The report states that 526 million people could be at risk of hunger because of climate change by 2050 because Land is being diverted away from the small-scale farmers who produce most of the food consumed in poor communities.
The report states that since 1960, a third of the world’s farmland has been abandoned because it has been exhausted beyond use; about 10 million hectares are destroyed every year.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that in Africa alone 6.3 million hectares of degraded farmland has lost its fertility and water-holding capacity and needs to be regenerated to meet the demand of food from a population set to double in Africa by 2050.
Worldwide hunger has been reduced by just 2% in the last 15 years.
ActionAid is the only UK international development charity with headquarters in the developing world with head offices in Johannesburg, South Africa.
It works in 19 countries across the continent dealing with issues such as HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment; famine relief; peace building; food and education.
With regional headquarters are in Nairobi while operating in 40 countries including Burkino Faso, Burundi, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
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