Agriculture tops development agenda

Officials in Zambia reiterated the government's commitment to agricultural development on Thursday, saying sustained investment in the rural economy could prove critical in tackling widespread poverty. "The government is convinced that, by making agricultural development the main thrust of current economic policy, we can bring poverty levels down. Poverty reduction is a serious matter for the government, and it does occupy the top of the country's developmental agenda," Minister of Agriculture Mundia Sikatana told IRIN. According to a recently released report by the UN Development Programme in Zambia, "poverty and hunger" had deepened since the 1990s, and Zambians today were more vulnerable than a decade ago. "Poverty in Zambia is widespread, with no area left untouched. Whereas 69 percent of Zambians in 1991 were classified as poor, the figure rose to 73 percent in 1998," the report noted. Moreover, it was estimated that up to 69 percent of poor households across the country had difficulty in accessing important social services such as education and health care. The 2003 Zambian Human Development Report, "Eradication of Extreme Poverty and Hunger in Zambia: An Agenda for Enhancing the Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals", said that while poverty was predominantly rural, it has been rising "faster" in urban areas. The increase in the number of urban poor households was attributed to economic liberalisation policies in the 1990s, which, the report noted, had failed to create jobs. Sikatana agreed that "distortionary measures", introduced in the 1990s to address poverty and unemployment, "had not achieved what they were set out to do". "The current government is in the process of reversing many of the detrimental policies which were set out by its predecessor," he added. While the previous government had neglected agricultural development, the government of President Levy Mwanawasa would focus on rural recovery. "Zambia has vast amounts of usable land, and abundant surface and underground water. Although we experienced some bad weather conditions recently, we basically have good climatic conditions and fertile soils. All of this leads us to believe that agriculture is where we should spend our energies," Sikatana said. He pointed to the country's recent recovery after serious food shortages in 2002, and noted that even though there had been a bumper maize harvest this year, the government would continue its assistance programme to farmers in the 2003/04 farming season. For the full UNDP report: www.reliefweb.int