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President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania and Sam Nujoma of Namibia have called for an increase in agricultural funding at the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) extraordinary summit on food security in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The theme for the summit is "Enhancing Agriculture and Food Security for Poverty Reduction in the SADC Region".

In a joint statement the three presidents urged SADC "to progressively increase financing agriculture by allocating at least 10 percent of their respective national budgets within the next five years".

These comments come just as Amnesty International is expressing its concerns that food is being used as a political weapon in Zimbabwe. According to Amnesty International, "if independent assessments are correct, the risk is that food will be used for political ends and food supplies will go first and only to supporters of the ruling party".

At the end of the summit no specific measures were put into place, but a joint declaration was released. The Dar Es Salaam declaration on agriculture and food security indicated that "states have undertaken to ensure availability and access of key agricultural inputs to farmers such as improved seed varieties, fertilisers, agro-chemicals, tillage services and farm implements which are critical to increase production".

There can be no doubt that agriculture is central to the economic prosperity of African nations, with about 35 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the SADC region stemming from agriculture, and about 13 percent of total export earnings coming from agriculture. These figures, which were reported by the Southern Africa Research and Documentation Centre, also indicate that about 70 percent of the combined population in the SADC region are directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture for food, income and employment.

During the summit President Mkapa of Tanzania indicated that he "feel[s] strongly about the indignity of having to beg for food from time to time". "I am sure that we can identify strategies that will, in the shortest possible time, work to improve agricultural production and enhance food security in the region" he said.

According to official statistics cereal production in the SADC region remained essentially unchanged in the period from 1990 to 2003, but the population grew from 152 million to 212 million people.

Sources: The Herald (Harare), Business Day