Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye has urged African leaders to significantly increase financial commitments to agriculture, stressing that the sector must become the backbone of the continent’s economic development.
Speaking at the opening of the 19th Forum on African Food Systems in Dakar, he drew on the 2023 Maputo Declaration, which recommends allocating at least 10% of national budgets to agriculture.
With over 700 million people suffering from hunger worldwide last year—many of them in Africa—Faye warned that without urgent action, more than a billion people could be chronically undernourished by 2030, half of them on the continent.
Presenting Senegal’s approach as an example, Faye highlighted investments in sustainable production models such as community cooperatives, reforms like the Sylvo-Pastoral law, and policies promoting water management, mechanization, and food storage infrastructure.
He argued that agriculture must be repositioned from a subsistence activity to a driver of food sovereignty, economic growth, and wealth creation, with Senegal committing substantial resources to modernize its agricultural system and reduce dependence on imports.
