Situation Report: Southern Africa Assessment: Food Security and HIV/AIDS, Mariam Jooma

2005 is being touted as the year that Africa stakes its claim on the international agenda, topping the list of priorities for the Group of Eight, the European Union and increasingly for American foreign policy. Indeed the continent has received better media attention in recent months stimulated by reinvigorated peace processes and the G7’s agenda for poverty eradication in Africa led by Britain. Nevertheless, poverty and hunger still characterise life for a majority of the continent’s inhabitants denied agency over their livelihoods as a result of a complex mix of reinforcing structural, political and environmental factors. Commenting on recent initiatives for debt relief for African countries, the World Bank’s James Wolfensohn said he hopes that “there is a recognition now on behalf of the rich world that they cannot continue to be rich if the world is destabilised by poverty”.