Food Relief For Africa 'Insufficient,' GAO Says

Efforts by the United States and multilateral agencies including the World Bank to reduce hunger in sub-Saharan Africa have been "insufficient," with foreign aid to the region failing to flow into agricultural development projects vital to the ability of poor countries to feed themselves, according to a report to be released this morning by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Issued ahead of a major United Nations summit in Rome next week to address the global food crisis, the report suggests that the failure to invest in African agriculture has contributed to the problems unfolding in the region as food prices soar worldwide. High dependence on imported food has been blamed for Africa's worse spike in hunger in years, with skyrocketing prices sparking unrest and food shortages in a number of nations, including Mauritania and Somalia.

The report, a draft copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, additionally describes U.S. aid efforts in sub-Saharan Africa as fragmented and misdirected. It says, for instance, that a Bush administration initiative to "end hunger in Africa" launched in 2002 effectively amounted to a repackaging of existing programs and came with no new funding.

At the same time, USAID, the main humanitarian aid arm of the U.S. government, has shifted away from promoting better crops, focusing instead on providing emergency food aid "to the detriment of actions designed to address the fundamental causes of these emergencies, including low agricultural productivity and other factors."