Ladies and gentlemen,
In the Horn of Africa I recently saw the cruelty of hunger at close range. I spoke with exhausted people who had been walking for days to reach a refugee camp. They were in a very bad state, especially the children.
In fact we are all familiar with images of refugees in the Horn of Africa, fleeing hunger and deprivation. They are heartbreaking, in particular when they show innocent children. These images perfectly demonstrate the effects of hunger in the short term. But let’s not forget that malnutrition, especially for children, has far-reaching effects in the long term as well.
A lack of essential nutrients prevents children from developing normally – both physically and mentally. Not only are individual lives ruined in this way – it also has a negative impact on society as a whole. Someone who is malnourished as a child won’t be able to participate fully in the labour force as an adult. In Africa, for example, the cost of malnutrition is an estimated 10 percent of the aggregated GDP.
Investing in food is not only humane, but also economically smart. Eminent economists established in 2008 that investing in food quality is one of the most cost-effective tools for economic growth in developing countries. That is what the development community now calls the Copenhagen Consensus.
My government now explicitly strives for better access to better food in developing countries. In fact it is simple: the healthy development of children is a requirement for economic growth, economic growth is a requirement for self-reliance, and I hope we all agree that self-reliance should be the ultimate goal of development cooperation.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I have said this on earlier occasions: the world is witnessing progress on an astonishing scale. China is prospering.The Indian economy has taken off. Brazil has a rapidly rising middle class. Africa, previously written off as the Lost Continent, has average growth rates that are beginning to attract investors. Eastern Europe is more or less democratic. And now even the Arab world is making its voice heard. This is the direction we always wanted the world to move in. The Third World has gone, poverty is decreasing.
But there is still a lot of work to be done. 925 million people still go hungry every day. Two billion people still lack the essential nutrients to live a long and healthy life. Those are the main reasons why food security is one of four priorities in Dutch development cooperation.
Unfortunately, the problem is growing. In 2050 nine billion people will be living on this planet, for whom a 70 percent increase in food production is needed, whereas the available farmland will increase by only 15 percent. And what’s more, natural resources will soon be exhausted. The world is facing climate change. And the demand for biofuels and high-protein nutrition is growing faster and faster.
So what we need is a coherent food security policy. My government aims to improve access to good food, as well as to strengthen food production in a sustainable way. We want to go from quantity to quality. In our view, governments, companies, NGOs and universities should join forces to achieve the right scale and find innovative solutions.
Pioneer projects like the School-feeding Initiative Ghana Netherlands – known as SIGN – gives us perspective on the challenges that lie ahead. Today, your stories about the SIGN project taught us that development does not go in a straight line. Sometimes domestic politics get in the way. On other occasions the problem is naivety. Or bad luck. Or lack of realism.
Ultimately, SIGN has had a significant impact. We have come a long way from an excellent idea to a properly managed program. Checks and balances have been introduced. Civil society has taken up its role in critically following implementation. And the program’s administration has improved dramatically.
Now is the time for Ghana and other players to continue the program without our support. Because with home-grown school feeding, ladies and gentlemen, everybody wins. Farmers earn more money, children do better in school and governments grow more effective.
Seeing this enormous return on investment, it will not come as a surprise that my government is trying to repeat the success in other developing countries. Not by simply reproducing the SIGN programme, because that wouldn’t make sense, but by assembling ideas on the ground for making locally-produced food better and more affordable. Promising progress is being made in Mozambique, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Bangladesh.
Of course, we are not working alone. Together with other donor countries, the Netherlands will be participating in the Scaling Up Nutrition Initiative. And together with Wageningen University, the multinationals Unilever, DSM and Akzo Nobel, and the NGOs ICCO and GAIN, we are working hard to give about 100 million children access to better food. And so on and so on.
In a nutshell: my government is fully committed to the fight against malnutrition, as I know you are too.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I would like to thank you for coming to The Hague today. I sincerely hope that this was an instructive and inspiring day for all of you. And I truly hope that you will continue to promote and foster food security in the future.
A special word of thanks to the people of SIGN. You have worked so hard in recent years. Thank you for your energy and your perseverance. You deserve to be proud of what you have accomplished. Your pioneering work sets a shining example, not only to us and the people of Ghana, but also to other countries where your lessons learned are taken to heart.
Thank you again and goodbye.
