Speech of H.E Dr. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, President of the Federal Republic of Somalia
The 46th session of the IFAD Governing Council
Rome, Italy
14th February 2023
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a great honour to be participating in the 46th session of the IFAD Governing Council here in this historic city of Rome, Italy. I thank the government and people of Italy for the warm welcome and hospitality accorded to myself and my delegation during this visit. I also recognize the great effort of all the IFAD professionals who have made this meeting possible.
The theme of the year: “Accelerating Action for Food Security” is both tragic and timely. It is tragic because, in this day and age when our world is richer and more technologically advanced than it has ever been in human history, the United Nation’s 2022 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report shows that the number of hungry people was rising to as many as 828 million in 2021. Billions of people could not, and still cannot afford, a healthy diet and women and children, as is sadly often the story, remain the most vulnerable to the acutest form of hunger. I am truly tired of these terrible statistics and painful stories and my government is determined to do something about it in Somalia. This is why I feel very strongly that this IFAD meeting is timely as it must re-energize and re-focus our passion and determination to turn the tide sustainably against unnecessary hunger once and for all despite all the challenges that exist today.
In Somalia, we are taking food security very seriously. In fact, I have stated many times before that food security is a fundamental part of national security for my government. In this sense the old saying that “A hungry person is an angry person” is correct because lack of food, hunger and deterioration of the conditions to make agriculture a viable economic opportunity like in the past has played a major role in prolonging local conflicts and spurred on the international terrorist group Al-Shabaab to create spaces from which they control, radicalize and subjugate parts of our rural population. We are now responding fiercely with successful military offensives which is liberating most of these territories from the terrorist group, but we have the challenge of a rebuilding a hopeful future for a truly resilient and deserving people with a strong innovative agricultural base to address insecurity, food insecurity and sustainable development.
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Accelerating Action for Food Security is central to the survival, and prosperity of the world. The war in Ukraine has very painfully illustrated that Food security is an international challenge with complex global supply chain with regional concentrations. For nations like Somalia, and most other nations which import most of their key food items, must adapt to survive and feed their population going forward.
In Somalia, over half of our population is food insecure and this includes the most vulnerable in our society including women and children. As the 4th consecutive rainy seasons failed many rural communities lost their livelihoods, food prices increased and the drought induced humanitarian crisis worsened. While we still need emergency humanitarian assistance to avert the worst of the drought and hunger today, I strongly belief that in Somalia we can be food secure in the future.
Somalia has abundant land and agricultural opportunities within our own territory and with a young population and a history of agricultural production which is almost 65% of our economy at present, we have a real opportunity to make food security a genuine reality. Food security, as an overarching policy goal, compliments our government’s wider vision of a strong, united, and progressive Somalia at peace with itself and the world. All our major policy priorities today whether it is security, economic reform and recovery, basic public service delivery and job creation can all be achieved in, through and with agricultural reforms and investment.
Ambition is a good starting point to accelerate action for food security, but we realize that action must follow quickly to capitalize on the national and global momentum. In Somalia, we have clear direction through our Food and Agricultural Delivery Compact, and we have started to take action by committing to strengthening our agricultural policies and processes, accelerating human capital investments and refocusing our collective efforts on achieving sustainable socio-economic development with real impact on people’s lives.
Our focus is supporting smallholder farmers, pastoralists, and agro-pastoralists to revive their lands and turn them into thriving businesses which provide food security for the wider rural communities and Somali nation while producing enough to both consume locally and sell in the international markets to turn a profit.
In this regard, Somalia’s vibrant private sector and growing financing institutions are all supportive of agricultural investments to modernize the sector and many have started working directly with farmers, especially women and young people, to re-inject hope and opportunity into agriculture. We are also actively encouraging all our bilateral and multilateral partners, including IFAD, to support us in reviving agriculture for food security, peace, jobs and prosperity.
This is very important at a critical time for our country and will most certainly contribute to accelerating food security in Somalia.
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Somalia is rich in land and marine resources which should make our country a FOOD BASKET not a FOOD INSECURE. However, our major obstacles to achieving food security have been 3 major things: conflict, climate and unsustainable national debt and arrears.
On the matter of conflict, we are now, as I informed you earlier, focused on defeating international terrorism at home together as one people alongside our international partners. The Somali people have answered our governments call to stand together to defeat the evil of terror from our land and have organically mobilized and are actively supporting the Government security services to liberate their territories. These newly liberated territories include much agricultural land which needs investment, and we are hopeful this can happen.
The reasons for our optimism are many but at the forefront is that we are progressing steadily through our debt relief program and hope to reach the Completion Point of the World Bank and IMF Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative by the end of this year. We hope that this will unleash a greater number of national and international potential resources to invest in our food security and this will help our government accelerate the push through real tangible investments alongside all our partners, including IFAD.
Climate change is a real challenge in Somalia, and we need to put in place mitigation and adaptation measures that help us all to overcome the recurrent climate induced crisis and shocks, including better water resource management, floods management systems and soil erosion. We have, for the first time, created the Ministry of Environment in Somalia to lead in this key area and this is evidence of how seriously we are taking the need to address this existential threat to our fragile food systems and whole way of life.
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am glad to say that Somalia’s arrears with IFAD are now cleared thanks to the generous and timely support of the Governments of Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, and Italy. Thank you.
Now, with this new start, IFAD can deepen its engagement with Somalia as we are able to access all the available services from this great institution. I understand that IFAD is already designing a new program with our government to address food insecurity, climate adaptation, land degradation and biodiversity. This is indeed the beginning of a hopeful new engagement which will, and must, accelerate action for food security on the ground for the Somali farmers, pastoralists, and agro-pastoralists as well as the wider Somali population.
In conclusion, I belief that the current food insecurity challenge in Somalia and across the world is not insurmountable. We can overcome it together through renewed and strengthened partnerships to accelerate and coordinate action against food insecurity. Knowledge sharing, burden sharing, common resource mobilization strategies and promoting investment and trade are real solutions we can work on together.
There already are global discussions and actions around relevant issues like climate change, conflict management, infrastructure, blue economy, technology, irregular migration, rapid urbanization, supporting Internally Displaced People, gender, and creating decent jobs to name a few.
However, we now need to connect all these important themes together as they are all intertwined with accelerating food security. Furthermore, let us look at all food systems together, not just agriculture but livestock, and fisheries to design and implement innovative and comprehensive policies accompanied by accessible financing and investments to overcome the chronic global food insecurity crisis today.
We cannot afford to act in silos or alone if we are to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals, especially, Ending Hunger and malnutrition by 2030, across the world as we hope and envisage in this gathering today. On our part, we remain committed to sustaining our economic development journey of which agricultural development is the cornerstone. As part of this commitment, we will honor financial obligations to IFAD going forward.
I thank you all.
