The Des Moines, Iowa-based World Food Prize Foundation has awarded its Norman Borlaug Medallion to former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who now heads the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, a foundation-funded effort to help small farmers increase their productivity and well-being.
While not quite on a par with Henry Kissinger’s 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, that’s quite a surprising award. So what has Mr Annan done to deserve it? Headed the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, mostly.
“Over the past decade, no one has done more than Kofi Annan to bring attention to the critical issue of global food security and nutrition around the world nor in fulfilling Norman Borlaug’s dream of bringing the Green Revolution to Africa.”
The words of Kenneth Quinn, President of the World Food Prize Foundation, which awards the medal.
That would be the same Green Revolution that turned India into a grain exporters where 42% of the children are stunted as a result of malnutrition? And the same Kofi Annan who laid out the Millennium Development Goals, which were going to halve hunger and poverty by 2015, which won him and the UN a Nobel Peace Prize to sit alongside Kissinger’s, and which look like missing most targets in most countries.
You could be forgiven for thinking that given the past record on global food and nutrition security, some fresh thinking might be in order. And there was some criticism at the African Green Revolution Forum, where Quinn presented the medallion to Annan. Not of Annan, of course; that would be rude. But of the approach.
[T]he limits of Borlaug’s work did not go unnoticed at the conference. At a session on the African agenda on climate change, Kwesi Attah-Krah of Bioversity, a Rome-based group, noted that the Green Revolution in India had been criticized for excessive irrigation and loss of genetic diversity in crops.
Although other speakers noted the political will needed to achieve a truly Green Revolution in Africa, Attah-Krah says, “Political will is adequate, but it has to be faced with reality. We need political bravery. This is not one size fits all. Have we done enough thinking on sustainability?”
Oh, and, by the way, the FAO’s estimate of the number of hungry dropped last year by 700,000, give or take.