Brussels, 28/03/2012 (Agence Europe) - Development aid granted by the EU to sub-Saharan Africa to ensure food security in this region is generally effective, but could be improved considerably, according to a report published on Wednesday 28 March by the European Court of Auditors. This special report analyses the relevance of this kind of aid with regard to the needs and priorities of the countries concerned, where the number of people suffering from hunger stood at 239 million in 2010, or 30% of the total population, and the effectiveness of EU actions.
Following an audit which focused on direct development support provided by the EU for each of the three planks of food security, which are availability of food, access to food and the use of foodstuffs (nutrition), the Court made the following recommendations: - for the programming period post-2013, the Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS) should carry out a structured assessment of the situation in each country and systematically take account of EU support possibilities; - the Commission should look into the possibility of setting in place a permanent instrument to address the consequences of food crises in developing countries, if required; - the Commission and the EEAS should give adequate priority to nutrition when defining the cooperation strategy, identifying and designing interventions and using policy dialogue with partner governments, notably in the framework of budget support programmes; - the Commission should set out intervention objectives that are sufficiently precise and measurable through performance indicators, and ensure that the objectives are achievable by better assessing the risks and assumptions concerning the successful implementation of the interventions; - the Commission should better support the financial sustainability of agricultural social transfer programmes.
The Court of Auditors has concluded that although the Commission has focused its development aid on the countries with the highest rates of malnourished people, it has not taken sufficient account of the EU's possibilities of supporting other countries which are also faced with chronic food insecurity. It stresses that the Food Facility of €1 billion, which was created in 2008 in reaction to the food price crisis of 2007-2008, was not designed to tackle long-term volatility in food prices. The report notes that although EU food aid takes due account of the needs and priorities of the countries as regards the availability of food and access to it, the Commission has not laid sufficient emphasis on nutrition. The Court also takes the view that the objectives of the EU's interventions often lack clarity, that the interventions themselves are often too ambitious, particularly as regards non-governmental organisation (NGO) projects, and that only half of interventions offer reasonable prospects of sustainability.
Nearly 1 billion people in the world are suffering from hunger. Food security has been defined by the UN as a condition where “all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”.
Over the period 2002-2010, the EU funded interventions in the field of food security in sub-Saharan Africa to a total level in excess of €3.1 billion. This aid was taken from the European Development Fund (EDF), the main cooperation instrument with the various countries of sub-Saharan Africa, which are all signatories of the Cotonou agreement linking the EU to the 79 ACP states (Africa/Caribbean/Pacific), as well as via the three thematic instruments funded by the EU budget (the “food security” budgetary line, the thematic food security programme and the Food Facility, which was created in 2008 to provide a rapid response to the crisis caused by the volatility of food prices in the developing countries). (AN/transl.fl)